The Editor, Sir:

The nation is engaged in much debate over how to overcome the effects of the locally created and globally enhanced economic crisis. As the Government grapples with putting together a credible Budget, various commentators have been offering different economic solutions to solve the nation's ills. I wish to argue that no economic strategy will effectively address the deep wounds of this nation without an extreme moral makeover.

Moral foundations

Our moral foundations are fundamentally compromised. Jamaica has grown wealthier during the last 20 years but not through increased production and export earnings. Rather, the wealth has been achieved at the awesome price of becoming debt-driven, addicted to avarice, crime-infested, violence-sapped, widening the gap between the rich and poor, importing more and exporting less, investing little in growing or consuming locally grown foods, and becoming overdependent on a fragile service industry. The end result is that we have become a society spiritually bereft because our moral foundations are fundamentally compromised.

As the Government prepares the next Budget, the critical subject of taxation will become paramount. We have produced a taxation culture that rewards the very wealthy and punishes the rest by making enterprise a painful business. Since the 1970s, the sad state of our parasitic political parties has ensured the absence of political, economic, social consensus that facilitates good governance. Instead, successive governments uncritically embrace the dominant global neo-liberal economics model of development that made the market into an uncontrollable god or goddess.

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

In the unrestrained race and insatiable appetite to acquire wealth quickly, anyhow, and at any price, the values of 'old Jamaica' that called for saving some of what you earn for a rainy day and not building your family's future on debts that cannot be serviced, were thrown overboard as archaic philosophy. In the 'new Jamaica' that has emerged, the soul of the nation has been fundamentally altered. A deadly virus that thrives on rampant individualism and a corrosive and selfish value system has infected the core of the nation. Everyone wants to live life in the fast lane! Our insatiable appetite for quick wealth is willing to accommodate the collateral damage of loss of lives, if that is what it takes to achieve our financial goals.

Long before this global financial crisis hit this nation, we had already compromised the economic foundations through our rampant consumerism supported by debt rather than savings. It was bereft of probity, thrift, personal responsibility and good stewardship of family life.

The moral makeover that is needed must be driven by courageous and resolute leadership at all levels. The renewal and transformation of the nation necessitates a new definition of what constitutes the common good for this nation. Everyone seems to be doing what is right in his or her own eyes because we have not corporately signed off on what are our consensus values. The moral assumptions and behavioural codes that informed how our people behaved in a neoliberal economic environment have disappeared and have been replaced by an 'anything-goes' culture.

BLIND LEADING BLIND

Our current crop of political and business leaders behave like the blind leading the blind in these dangerous and uncharted waters. They are fast losing their legitimacy because they have fundamentally breached the exercise of authority and discipline in the nation. They have sown the wind and are reaping the whirlwind! I heard a security guard describe our new get-rich-quick class as "forced ripe ... hurry-come buttu inna Benz". They always do well in our kleptocratic financial culture where there are no rules for people with money. They will buy or pay their way through any entrenched bureaucracy to make more money. However, for the ordinary person who obeys the rules of this nation, their progress will always be blocked.

Not business as usual!

Our nation must change course if it is to survive in these dangerous times. It cannot be business as usual! This economic tsunami requires the full mobilisation of the Jamaican nation to overcome the threat to our national well-being. No one party can deliver this nation out of this entrenched crisis. Now, more than ever, the leadership of our political parties, the private sector and civil Jamaica must hold the Govern-ment and Opposition accountable and must demand the development of a united front to address this deadly threat.

I am, etc.,

REV DR RODERICK HEWITT

hewittrodyahoo.com

Hope United Church

221 Old Hope Road

Kingston 6