This is a wonderful time to raise again some of the fundamental questions of political economy. The prime minister found it necessary to take the unprecedented step of making a national broadcast on the eve of the presentation of the revenue budget in Parliament by his minister of finance to prepare the nation for 'inevitable' tax increases.

The Estimates of Expenditure, with the projections of what the Government, as Santa Claus, caught between a rock and a hard place, intends to provide for the people, had already been tabled, along with the 'Throne Speech of Good Intentions'.

Individuals and companies are forced to consider core functions, the uncuttables if they are to remain viable entities in the face of hardship and crisis. So, back to those old basic questions of political economy: What is the role of government? What makes economies flourish? What constitutes fair taxation?

Problems with political administrations

A significant part of our dilemma is that our political administrations neither ask nor answer these questions to provide a coherent philosophy of government.

With one of the highest murder rates in the world and with a massive backlog of cases and courthouses falling down; with a secondary-road network in shambles and bridges falling down, what, for example, is the real justification for putting 13 per cent of the Budget, the biggest slice of the non-debt Budget on education, offered 'free' to all up to the secondary level, including those who can afford to pay, and heavily subsidised at the tertiary level? Heretical question! But what are the core functions of government, which crisis should assist us to clarify?

Few political economists or ordinary citizens would disagree with Adam Smith about the three core functions of Government: "The sovereign has only three duties to attend to, three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings," he proposed in his monumental investigation into the causes of the Wealth of Nations. "First the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other societies. Second, the duty of protecting every member of the society from the injustice and oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice. And, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain ..."

Since the threats of French invasions in the 18th century, the Government of Jamaica has had no problem with having to carry out the first duty. So the hand of public administration has been free to concentrate on the other two duties. And here there have been miserable failures. Every uprising, from the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 to the gas tax protest of 1999, has had injustice as an underlying theme.

The prime minister softly told the nation that the Government had put the security forces on alert to put down any anti-tax protest. This has been the primary duty of the constabulary force and the militia/army since right after the Morant Bay Rebellion - to use force of arms to neutralise unrest.

Deeper justice

Justice at a deeper level than the courthouse has to be in short supply if after 170 years of full Emancipation a third of the population still dwells as squatters. The quest for land ownership, and with it independence, was a driving force among the ex-slaves as historian Philip Sherlock so well captured in the chapter, 'A 'Ground' of my Own' in his West Indian Nations: A New History. This quest was actively thwarted by the planters and has not been much assisted by governments since then.

The 'Five-Year Independence Plan, 1963-1968', having reviewed the injustices of history, announced in bold terms a land-reform programme and a housing programme, among other things. Some 46,000 acres of land was to accommodate small farmers on titled lots and the plan estimated that some 165,000 housing units were needed, in 1963, in the low-income sector. Justice is not served when today, in 2009, we are advised on the front page of the Financial Gleaner of April 17 that 80 per cent of National Housing Trust contributors cannot afford even the lowest mortgage payments.

Housing stock has crumbled in inner-city communities. The only real war that Jamaica has had on Jamaican soil since the Maroon wars of the 18th century has been the political tribal war embedded within garrison communities accounting now for some 80 per cent of the murders in the country and for much of the urban blight. Programmes of urban renewal and legal settlement of squatters would not only provide a huge slice of the Jamaican population with greater justice and better prospects of advancement, and the nation with greater security, but would be a powerful stimulus to the general economy.

"The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition, the principle from which public and national, as well as private opulence is originally derived, is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things towards improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government and of the greatest errors of administration," the great political economist Adam Smith noted.

A tool of oppression

Taxes can be a tool of oppression wielded against the taxed, or, handled correctly, a tool of development. Americans last Tuesday, April 13, marked 'Tax Freedom Day', the day when, on average, US citizens would have earned enough to meet their total tax obligations for the year. This has been their earliest Tax Freedom Day for a while. Our Tax Freedom Day must be later in the year. The negative effect of taxes, which our government should watch very carefully is that, as Smith put it 233 years ago, "it may obstruct the industry of the people and discourage them from applying to certain branches of business which might give maintenance and employment to great multitudes".

Jamaica is overtaxed and underserved by government in its most fundamental roles and in everything else that it has taken on. And the consequences are much more severe and long-lasting than short-lived violent protests.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Feedback may be sent to medhen@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.