Harry Truman once demanded to see a one-armed economist after growing exasperated with those practitioners of what’s been called “the dismal science” who provided “on the one hand … but on the other hand” answers to his every question on fiscal policy.

That American president surely isn’t the only politician who has openly yearned for assurance on economic matters or seethed at the dithering of his financial advisers. For the “dismal science” can be a famously inexact discipline, one based as much on intuition as the meticulous assessment of endless economic data.

So spare a thought for Bermuda’s incoming Premier and finance minister David Burt. Ever since the dust settled from last month’s election he has been engaged in an endless round of meetings not only with government’s own economic consultants but also with leaders of both the local and offshore business communities.

He will have heard many conflicting points of view by now on how to best maintain and extend our budding economic recovery, and just as many different opinions on what the new government’s priorities should and should not be in this area.

But it seems certain there will have been a fair degree of overlap and agreement on some key points, chief among them the fact the new Progressive Labour Party government will have to strive to live within its means because Bermuda literally cannot afford the alternative.

When the last PLP administration was voted out of office in 2012 it left behind an economic legacy which was truly lamentable.

Yes, a global recession was in full throttle throughout part of its last term, but PLP fiscal and immigration policies amplified its effects rather than mitigated them. The result was a massively diminished private sector and tax base, plummeting government revenues and a runaway public debt which has now reached more than $2 billion (debt servicing costs now outstrip spending on Bermuda’s largest ministry, Health and Seniors, by more than $23 million).

With the PLP’s last five financial statements only receiving tepid qualified audits from the Auditor-General, with public-sector overspending and mismanagement becoming chronic problems and with the government at the time demonstrating a staggeringly blasé disregard for any and all uncomfortable facts which contradicted how it believed economics worked, Bermuda came perilously close to fiscal extinction. The much-celebrated “Bermudian economic miracle”, once the envy of small jurisdictions the world over, was almost eclipsed by the lengthening shadows of unsustainable public spending, monstrous deficits and skyrocketing unemployment.

Mr Burt has been refreshingly candid about the economic shortcomings of the last PLP government, acknowledging past mistakes and pledging — repeatedly — that they will not happen again on his watch.

However, his plans for continuing the new economic momentum created under the outgoing One Bermuda Alliance government remain just ambiguous enough to be causing a frisson of concern among those expected to invest in and shore up this community, those who will ultimately ensure whether or not the Bermuda economy is in fact revitalised.

It cannot be stated too often or too emphatically that a government does not create jobs — all it can do is foster the conditions which encourage job creation and economic growth by way of its policies and the various incentives offered to entrepreneurs.

So far, by way of economic policy specifics, Mr Burt has, among other things, promised to balance the budget by 2019 (seemingly without any concurrent major cuts in spending), create a nebulous “economic diversification unit” and impose additional tax hikes on the wealthy.

But as of yet not much has been said about growing the tax base, that indispensable prerequisite for expanding the economy, paying down the debt and maintaining or increasing levels of government expenditure.

For if the new PLP administration is to live within its means without resorting to various forms of belt-tightening, including spending cutbacks, salary rollbacks for the public sector and various other austerity-type measures, then ultimately it has no choice but to take action to increase those means.

And this ultimately means that making Bermuda a more attractive place to invest and do business in over the long term is of far more importance to creating a sustainable revenue stream than resorting to the short-term expediency of jacking up tax rates on those who already do business here.

That’s why much of the populist clamour recently heard on the campaign trail about increasing taxes on the offshore sector and the captains of that industry, while certainly politically useful, is economically self-defeating.

Corporations based in Bermuda and those who run them are the most rational of economic actors. When tax rates are raised to uncompetitive levels, they leave for more hospitable climes, in which case the Bermuda Government forgoes not just any expected revenue gains, but all of the revenues it had previously been collecting.

This is exactly what happened under the last PLP government when a combination of ill-considered tax increases and an incoherent immigration policy led to not only an exodus of offshore firms and their employees, but also triggered secondary shock waves throughout that sector’s support and satellite industries.

Presumably, further details on the PLP economic recovery plans will be forthcoming when Mr Burt has finished talking with the various wise heads he’s consulting, discussed options with his colleagues and prepared government position papers for when Parliament reconvenes.

But no matter how dizzying and sometimes contradictory the advice he must now be hearing, he certainly doesn’t need a one-armed economist to tell him that drawing more overseas investment, companies and people to Bermuda will be indispensable to any enduring economic rebound.