In a local free currency market, absent the Trinidad & Tobago Central Bank regardless of how "limited" the supply of US dollars, there would never be any "shortage" -where a would be purchaser cannot find $US available at the market price in $TT.
For in a liberated currency market there is always enough supply available to satisfy demand at the market clearing exchange rate.
For example if there are severe declines in energy production and consequent declines in exports ($US earnings) there will be increasing scarcity of US dollars locally. This scarcity would be "rationed" voluntarily to the purchasers of US dollars by the uncoerced rise in the exchange rate, a rise sufficient to equalize supply and demand.
When a growing government and the politically connected enjoy the spoils plundered from the population it is substantiated on the basis that an elite ruling political class inevitably exists for society to function.
Via T&T's government funded education system the population is taught that the political class are especially special, wise and benevolent, exceedingly superior than members of the general population.
By Dr. Mark Thornton
Most attentive parents today rarely allow their children to go
unsupervised, particularly in public. It starts with the wireless baby
monitor for the crib
and ends with the ever-present cell phone at college graduation.
This is what makes reports from the US-Mexican border so perplexing to
most Americans. It is hard to believe that parents would send their
children, even
young children, to travel many hundreds of miles, up to 1,600 miles
without guardianship, or under the control of “mules” who guide the
children with the
hope of a safe voyage to the United States.
The journey is both harsh and dangerous. The northern regions of Central
America (i.e., Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) and Mexico are
some of the most
dangerous areas of the world. The climate can be harsh, roads and travel
conditions are mostly poor, and the children are subjected to robbers,
kidnappers,
rapists, government police and soldiers, drug cartel members, and
bandits of all sorts.
Apart from the criminalization of drugs which inflates drug prices to the benefit of producers, traffickers and gangs; no other single factor has contributed to the socio economic decline of Laventille and its environs than the billions of taxpayer dollars spent "helping" Laventille.
Sadly, more people are living in fear and in substandard living conditions in East Port of Spain and Laventille today than 20 or 30 years ago.
This unfortunate reality has come about in spite of a heavy concentration of welfare dollars via social programmes such as the URP, Food Card Programme, CEPEP, Targeted Conditional Cash Transfer Programme and other make work programmes.
These programmes all seek to undo the consequences of poor individual moral choices. For poor moral choices typically precede poor personal financial outcomes in the long run. These poor moral choices include casual, unprotected premarital sex and apathy towards educational attainment, deferred gratification and hard work.
