These are the last dying signs of a political provocateur and dinosaur.

It really disturbs me when persons sink to such depths...hawk spit!!

This right there deals a stinging blow to our efforts aimed at achieving restorative justice.

@Courtesy wrote:

These are the last dying signs of a political provocateur and dinosaur.

It really disturbs me when persons sink to such depths...hawk spit!!

This right there deals a stinging blow to our efforts aimed at achieving restorative justice.

Please "ask" dem what was the poverty rate @independence...what was the net reerves (not The Bank of England's🤔)

@Courtesy wrote:

These are the last dying signs of a political provocateur and dinosaur.

It really disturbs me when persons sink to such depths...hawk spit!!

This right there deals a stinging blow to our efforts aimed at achieving restorative justice.

Par for the course with this pretender, sir.

Cannot govern, this lady with a small country mind. This statement is not evil from her; the poor child just doesn’t get it. Ignorance and modern privilege.

She in same boat as people like Tim Scott, Brandon Tatum, Byron Donalds.....the Caribbean version.

In her own perverted way she thinks falling prostrate before a certain kind protects her people. Shamelessness on steroids.

@Brerzerk wrote:

Please "ask" dem what was the poverty rate @independence...what was the net reerves (not The Bank of England's🤔)

There is no question in anybody's mind with a knowledge of Caribbean history that her statement is patently false.

@Halliwell wrote:

Par for the course with this pretender, sir.

Cannot govern, this lady with a small country mind. This statement is not evil from her; the poor child just doesn’t get it. Ignorance and modern privilege.

Can you believe a current day Caribbean leader would make such a statement, mate?

@Cheeks wrote:

She in same boat as people like Tim Scott, Brandon Tatum, Byron Donalds.....the Caribbean version.

In her own perverted way she thinks falling prostrate before a certain kind protects her people. Shamelessness on steroids.

She is focused on manifesting into reality her fever dreams.

@Courtesy wrote:

Can you believe a current day Caribbean leader would make such a statement, mate?

Maybe 20 years ago it would have been still unbelievable yet still not a great surprise if coming from certain quarters. But in 2026, no way man. Not when you have Mia educating these fools for so long.

I would expect Trinidad to start taking nuclear waste shipments and deportees of various countries if Trump asks.

..............

Instead of anger towards the PM , why not look at the failure of 50 plus years of Eric Williams PNM running T&T...we cant do such , why be a critic of a brother. The suicidal moron is beyond such. Look at the Debt in T&T today its is a bankrupt country.

This is a small part of a Thesis: Economics at University.

  The Failure​s of St. Lucian economist Sir W. Arthur Lewis, Dr. Eric Williams, and Jobless Growth  

The structural poverty in post-independence Trinidad and Tobago is a direct consequence of a dual failure: the structural breakdown of St. Lucian economist Arthur Lewis model and the compounding governance missteps of Prime Minister Dr. Eric Williams. When the nation gained independence in 1962, it attempted to dismantle colonial inequality by deploying Lewis’s "Industrialization by Invitation" blueprint. This model mathematically assumed that by courting foreign manufacturing monopolies with tax holidays and state-subsidized infrastructure, a highly productive modern sector would emerge. This sector was supposed to continuously absorb the "unlimited supply of labor" trapped in the impoverished, traditional agricultural sector, reinvesting its capitalist surplus into domestic growth until a macro-economic turning point was reached where national wages would naturally rise.

However, this theoretical formula collapsed when met with the realities of global capital. Instead of building labor-intensive factories, invited multinational corporations imported highly automated, capital-intensive machinery designed for the Global North. This structural mismatch triggered a devastating era of "jobless growth," leaving national unemployment surging past 15% by the late 1960s. Furthermore, the model’s core assumption of profit reinvestment failed; foreign conglomerates and the traditional white expatriate elite hoarded capital or repatriated their immense surpluses abroad, entirely bypassing the local working class.

This structural economic failure was severely worsened by the domestic policy decisions of Dr. Eric Williams. Rather than correcting the structural imbalances of the Lewis model, Williams pursued policies that entrenched state dependency. In his rush to industrialize, his administration systematically neglected domestic agriculture, destroying local food security and permanently chaining the survival costs of poor citizens to volatile, expensive international food imports.

Following the explosive social unrest of the 1970 Black Power Revolution, Williams used the unexpected windfall of the 1973 OPEC oil crisis to fund short-term political survival rather than genuine economic diversification. The state established massive, low-productivity make-work patronage schemes (such as DEWD), which distributed temporary state income in exchange for political loyalty. This centralized wealth within a top-heavy, slow-moving bureaucracy, masking poverty during oil booms but leaving the population entirely exposed to severe structural misery whenever global commodity markets crashed. Ultimately, the combined legacy of Lewis’s flawed model and Williams’s patronage politics replaced a colonial extraction system with a volatile, state-dependent energy enclave, trapping over 20% of modern citizens in enduring poverty. Today 10 days of work per month classified as jobs.😡

Academic References

Auty, Richard M. (1990). Resource-Based Industrialization: Sowing the Oil in Eight Developing Countries. Clarendon Press.

• Examines how Trinidad fell victim to the Resource Curse and Dutch Disease due to Williams's macro-economic management, detailing its severe agricultural neglect.

Best, Lloyd, and Levitt, Kari (1969). "Externally Propelled Growth and Industrialization in the Caribbean." Montreal: McGill University (Mimeo).

• Introduces the "Plantation Economy" critique, directly explaining why Lewis's labor absorption failed in Caribbean energy enclaves.

Carrington, Edwin (1967). "Industrialization by Invitation in Trinidad and Tobago Since 1950." New World Quarterly, 4(2), 37–43.

• A vital economic audit tracking how the "Aid to Pioneer Industries" framework brought capital-intensive foreign machinery instead of local jobs, directly introducing jobless growth.

Lewis, W. Arthur (1954). "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour." The Manchester School, 22(2), 139–191.

• The core text detailing the theoretical math behind the capitalist surplus, capital stock (\(K\)), and the targeted structural transformation from traditional to modern sectors.

Oxaal, Ivar (1982). Black Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Race and Class in Trinidad. Schenkman Publishing Company.

• Details the PNM's early post-independence social engineering policies, the education expansion, and the rise of the 1970 Black Power movement.

Pantin, Dennis (1989). "The Caribbean Petro-State: The Case of Trinidad and Tobago." Social and Economic Studies, 38(4), 1–30

Sarge

Note : What I admire about this site are the critics that spew venom and clueless why certain statements are made by politicians. If only they dig under the prose that's printed a different picture will emerge , but we must remain crabs in the barrel. It suits us best.

..............For The Pseudos'

Nominal GDP Per Capita Comparison (1962

Trinidad and Tobago: $703.62 US

 Japan: $684.57 USD

Singapore: $472.08 USD 

Key Contextual Differences

• Compared to Singapore: Trinidad and Tobago’s average income per person was roughly 49% higher than Singapore’s ($472.08 USD). At the time, Singapore was a struggling, resource-poor British crown colony dealing with high unemployment and severe housing shortages. 
• Compared to Japan: Trinidad and Tobago was slightly richer than Japan ($684.57 USD). In 1962, Japan was still in the middle of its post-WWII economic reconstruction and had not yet transformed into the global technology and automotive powerhouse it became later in the decades.

​TODAY

The dynamic has radically inverted. Driven by institutional reforms, strategic global trade policies, and massive investments in human capital, Singapore and Japan have multi-generationally eclipsed Trinidad and Tobago. 

• Singapore has achieved a GDP per capita of approximately $98,814 USD, evolving into a global financial nucleus.
• Japan commands an average GDP per capita of roughly $35,951 USD.
• Trinidad and Tobago stands at roughly $18,967 USD, showing steady growth but trailing the explosive modern trajectories of the other two nations

References

• World Bank Open Data: The primary source for official national accounts and historical GDP per capita figures (current US$) tracking global development indicators from 1960 onward.
• Macrotrends Historical Data: Provides complete year-by-year tables documenting Trinidad and Tobago's nominal per capita progression from its independence year of 1962 ($703.62) to present levels.
• Our World in Data: Compiles long-term cross-country income comparisons adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity across international institutions.
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED): Maintains official economic research data for Gross Domestic Product Per Capita specific to Trinidad and Tobago.

@sgtdjones

So you think courting data centers is a better development model? If I recall correctly, you attempted to defend such recently.