By Bill Lindo
Belize City, January 24th 2021: There is no single reason nor answer to the above question. Some say well the Belizean electorate was tired of the United Democratic Party (UDP). Others say it was because the Peoples United Party (PUP) was better financed. And some others believe that the PUP election machinery was better. A sizable amount of the middle-class said it was because of UDP corruption. And others believe it was that the PUP promised better education.
But the main reasons were the issues of jobs and land. Now the oligarchs don’t like this jobs and land things.
Let’s deal with the land issue first. In the middle of the eighteen century, one of The United States of America founders, Ben Franklin wrote:
“There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbours. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in his favour, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.”
Following Franklin’s theory, when the Belizean farmer puts twenty pounds of corn seeds in the dirt, after three months that farmer in Belize can harvest from two thousand up to ten thousand pounds of corn. This is honest work, and for his honest work, God rewards the farmer with an increase of 100 to 500 times his input, depending on the skill and technology (engineering know-how) used by the farmer in the growing of the corn.
Belize is a small country in the heart of the Caribbean basin with a small population of some 400,000 persons. The country has some 5.6 million acres of land on the mainland. Still, land is limited especially for agriculture, as some 44% of the land consists of mostly steep slopes, the Maya mountains, and a lot of lime karsts. Then there is the “pine ridge” savannah with poor drainage, and shallow top soils, sometimes less than ten inches. (These “pine-ridge” soils can be made very productive as Brazil has done using the method of “mineralization” and in particular, adding calcium to the soil; but presently, this isn’t necessary.) This only leaves some 36%, or about 2,028,200 acres of Belize’s land area as suitable for agriculture, of which some 150,000 acres is now used for pastures and 213,500 acres for crops. The remainder of land, about 1,664,700 acres or 2,600 square miles, while spread over all six districts, is mostly located in the Stann Creek and Toledo districts.
However, of that vast majority of the 2,600 square miles of land suitable for agriculture about 90% are in the hands of private foreign absentee land owners. The national government will have to compensate those land owners for the local Belizeans to own a piece of the jewel. Over the last forty years every government has been doing that.
Historically, past governments, especially the George Price governments have taken over 1,000 square miles (640,000 acres) from absentee land owners for distribution to native Belizeans. Many villages and even Corozal Town land were nationalized by the George Price PUP so that the people of that municipality could own the land that their houses sit on.
Now human beings have three basic requirements for life on this planet we call Earth – food, clothing and shelter. These three are supplied from the land. The land is where the nutrient-dense foods are grown which gives us the energy to sustain life and health. We are what we eat. And that same land is where the cloths that we wear comes from like cotton, which is grown on the land; the petroleum from under the ground that produces the nylon, and polyester; or the sheep that grazes on the land and eats the products of the land and gives us wool. The houses we build to shelter us from the elements sit on land. The timber, stone, cement, iron we use to build them all come from the land.
So, Belizeans do you see why land is so important. What does Guatemala want? LAND!
The PUP in its Manifesto – Plan Belize — promised the Belizean People that they will make sure that every citizen owns a piece of land, and has access to fertile family farm land, with priority given to first time land ownership for women and young families. Some 60,000 house lots or 15,000 acres will be distributed in the next four years according to the Hon. Cordel Hyde. In addition, 250,000 acres (390 sq. miles) will be distributed as family farms to Belizeans who wish to make farming a life venture.
On Thursday, January 14th 2021, Hon. Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources (lands) and Deputy Prime Minister of Belize travelled to Dangriga Town to meet potential first time land owners. Close to two hundred Belizeans showed up at his Dangriga office and over one hundred of their applications were processed. Observers were stunned that the people were well behaved and in good spirits. This shows the pent-up demand for land in this country. And more importantly that the people believed Hon. Cordel Hyde. This was evident in the recent election of November 11th 2020 when the PUP won 26 of 31 seats and Hon. Cordel Hyde received for the first time in Belize’s history some 90% of the votes casted in his division. The Electorate believed that he will deliver on his promise of 60,000 house lots and 250,000 acres of family farm land for the Belizean people.
The promise to distribute land to the landless will also help to reduce the grinding poverty affecting our beautiful country since the big boys tricked us with their Covid-19 madness. Covid-19 only affects the poor and the weak. Anyone with a robust immune system need not fear Covid 19. Covid-19 now has our beautiful country of Belize with over 60% rate of poverty. Cordel and the George Price wing of the PUP will use land to reduce our grinding poverty by over 20%, but the key to eradicate poverty as promised in the Bible/Creed of the PUP is to cause full employment in Belize.
The PUP promised the Belizean voters that they will cause or create more than 50,000 jobs (10,000 per year) if elected. This figure was from 2018 when research was being done to decide the extent of the economic problems the Belizean economy had. Since Covid-19, an additional 18,000 must be added to the 50,000 necessary high paying jobs. A country with its rich resources such as Belize can easily create some 13,600 per year, new high paying jobs with wages of at least $20,000 per year. This is easily doable.
But our problem is that there is only one Cordel Hyde. The majority of the non-George Price PUP are not interested in creating any new jobs. They only wanted to win. In fact, Rado has embarrassed the PUP with his nonsense on TV that he is firing the small vulnerable men and women because he can’t fire the big UDP’s. So, the small vulnerable persons must pay the price of voting for the PUP, while the big fat cats who have supported the UDP for the last 12 years continue to enjoy the sweets? And to make matters worse he is going around in the Party lobbying others with his ridiculous opinion that the government should sell its shares in the national telephone company (BTL) for some 25 million dollars to the “bacra man” across the pond after this country paid over $550 million for that same BTL. As one of my good long-time PUP friends recently remarked, “My voice has become meek and no one listens…My country for thee I worry…”
Smart people will ask why doesn’t the PUP, with its American System Creed/Philosophy, do the right thing and rule by the people, for the people? The answer is, a mis-education of our baby-boomer children, who all mostly went to universities, but were mis-educated. They believe with their whole heart the nonsense that the private sector is the sole creator of wealth. “The sole source of wealth is the rise in the productivity of human labour effected through technological progress.” (Lindo, 1995) Money is NOT wealth. Wealth is saved labour. Money is a means to exchange wealth.
One of the fundamental differences between the American System — the George Price System, and the British System is the following:
Technology and innovation always cause new methods to enter production and thus profits and wages don’t diminish but instead leads to higher productivity and thus higher wages to workers. Technology, the invention of something new, especially the application of scientific knowledge to develop new machinery and equipment – always leads to higher productivity, thus increasing both profits and wages, leading to a harmony of interests – not class warfare.
Therefore, the theory of Diminishing Returns is not valid to physical reality. A stupid theory that has been taught by all the British economists from the Rev. Thomas Malthus, Marshall, John Keynes, and the modern versions pushed in today’s schools is that Capitalism has the seed of its own destruction within it. In fact, Keynes said that the best way to postpone this dreadful day is not to invest in productive activities such as building two railway lines from York to London, but instead better to build two pyramids – two tombs for the dead.
Rev. Thomas Malthus advocated that the landlords of old, today’s bankers, should be allowed to take at least 40% off the top of any productive venture such as agriculture and manufacturing, especially so as to ensure that Capitalism will endure in the future. For many years it was understood that one of government’s main function was to regulate and tax away rentier income and interest from loans because they are unproductive income and a drain upon society. The “free loafer” doesn’t sow, but wants 50% of the proceeds for doing nothing after the worker has reaped. Even the Western classical economist such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo were against the “free loafer” called economic rent– especially by landlords. They considered it a “free-lunch”. Why? Speculators always try to borrow, to create debt, to buy such rent extracting privileges. Instead of a “market” in which rent was paid as taxes, the “free-lunch” was financialized – it was capitalized into bank loans to be paid out as interest or dividends. Banks then gain at the expense of the tax collector, and thus, the lower classes lose as governments go broke and cut social services.
The George Price premise is that within one or two decades Belize will achieve nearly full economic independence by pursuing a national policy that stimulates higher (physical) economic productivity and development and that eradicates poverty through self-reliance and full employment. Inthis statement the objective is very clear – the end result of economic activities and policy must be for the common good – “Regulating the economy solely by centralized planning perverts the basis of social bonds; regulating it solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994).
What is needed is a foundation on which the future development of Belize can rest. An excellent idea is the irrigation of some 3,000 square miles (2 million acres) of Belize’s territory to take advantage of its abundant supply of fresh water, available land, wonderful climate, and a basic educated labour-force, all in the wake of the continuing Covid-19 crisis. Make no mistake – only agriculture can create something from nothing. A farmer plants 20 pounds of seed in the soil and after a mere 90 days gets back from the soil some 2,000 to 10,000 pounds of grain. The only other way is using violence to steal or make war on others. Abbie, we support you. Protect the local farmers – all of them.
Equally important, this great project would create the opportunity for life-long, meaningful employment for the people of Belize. All viable development, not mere monetary growth, must rest on some foundation, a foundation that is based on the physical economy, which we usually call an “impossible dream” – not on some practical plan which can be done in four or five years. This is why during the period 1958 to 1988 the so-called import substitution growth plans of Latin American countries all failed. Building industry just because you want to follow others will always fail.
This impossible dream, while you may even think of it as utopic, is something which challenges the human mind. Two historic realities may apply here. Firstly, in 1950 the Peoples United Party (PUP) demanded political Independence from a major world power, Great Britain. For over 30 years the PUP was a laughing stock to most “practical” people because of its insistence for political Independence in Belize, that is, until September 21st, 1981 when the British flag no longer flew over the nation-state of Belize. The other historic reality is United States President Jack Kennedy’s 1961 decision that by 1970 the United States would not only send a man to the moon but also bring him back alive. People, practical people, laughed at Kennedy. In 1961 it was impossible to send a man to the moon, much less bring him back alive. The technology – the knowledge did not exist; many things from small computers to lasers had to be developed to carry out the task of putting man on the moon. Everything we take for granted today — smart phones, lasers, portable computers, digital cameras, are as a result of the feat of putting Buzz Aldrin Jr. and Neil Armstrong on the moon on July 21st, 1969 and bringing them both back alive.
The “key” to genuine development and full Economic Independence which will not reduce but rather eradicate poverty and create full employment in Belize –the objective of the philosophy of the nationalists of Belize, the George Price way — is advance developments in basic economic infrastructure combined with rapid increases in energy flux densities per capita and per square mile. Government is the only institutional force which can implement rapid increases in energy flux densities and rapid advances in basic economic infrastructure. But advanced developments in both basic economic infrastructure and energy flux densities per capita and per square mile can only be “squeezed from the human brain” as Walker Lee Cisler (prominent American engineer) said, which means you need high-quality (or highly skilled) scientists and engineers. Genuine development is an act of human creation – it is a complete change of our present culture – a reversal from hopelessness and hedonism to one of progress.
Bill Lindo blog 