I recently wrote about Sir Henry Tucker. The motive behind it was to use our history to demonstrate the power of vision and, more specifically, to highlight the role of market leaders. Sir Henry was the classic example of the combination of business and political leadership.

The private sector and marketplace is the main instrument that generates the economy. Government is the regulator and provides services that also significantly contribute to the overall economic pie.

Looking around the world, there are examples where governments as regulators have directed the market in ways that resulted arguably in an improved marketplace. However, it has always been the free-spirited ingenuity within the marketplace that created the new-found wealth. We can look no farther than President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 44-nation Bretton Woods conference, or Steve Jobs and Apple, to see two defining roles as examples of government and the private sector at work.

There is the theory that solutions lie wherever the problems exist. Bermuda suffers an economic imbalance because under the existing tax construct, the private sector has become too weak to sustain the Government. While the tax structure does disadvantage the public, the design is thought to be the main pillar that attracts and encourages the much needed foreign investment.

Progressive tax was talked about more than a half-century ago, but successive governments avoided it like the plague. I do not know whether Robert Stubbs dangled this carrot now, since the Progressive Labour Party victory at the General Election, to be facetious because he of all persons would know that introducing a progressive tax system under the PLP Government, in particular, will take away any advantages Bermuda enjoys over its rivals at present.

That proposed tax quagmire on the surface may appear as a simple fix, but would mean a complete overhaul of our economy. A progressive tax system on its own is not a sole panacea and is quite an aside from the causes of the wealth-gap issue of economic disparity, which acts as a countervailing force against aspirations of equal upward mobility or diversity and inclusion in the marketplace.

The disparity in the marketplace requires a market solution, not a social one. Progressive tax would sort out the issue of affordability of education, senior care and a host of items within the social phenomenon, but that would be assuming everything that we enjoy right now from international business and benefits derived from wealthy, long-term residents remains the same.

Meddling with our tax structure now will be stepping into the unknown. It is better to focus on increasing the economy wherever possible and, of course, if possible. According to natural law, unless there is a significant near-supernatural infusion of cash, the current debt and the existing status quo and configuration of the market, with all of its disparities and social problems, will remain the same. “Rearranging the deckchairs” will not stop our economy from sinking; the only true cure is growth.

Problems should define true activism: when people were disenfranchised, adult suffrage was the activism; when there was segregation, it led to the Civil Rights movement.

There was a time right within a single workplace when persons were paid differently because of favour until labour movements fought for equal pay for equal work. Today we need to define the issues and those issues should define the movement.

The intellectual question for this era is one of defining the challenges of economic disparity. The answer is always exactly where the problem is. If it’s the marketplace, then we need market solutions. If the problem is within labour, then it follows we need a labour solution. The real item is defining what we need today.