Leroy Fearon | Economic security: The China way

In my recent article, ‘Jamaica Has a Salary Problem, but We Keep Calling It a Cost-of-Living Problem’, I argued that the central economic question is not simply how much money Jamaicans earn, but how much that money can actually buy.

That conversation, however, cannot end with wages. If we want Jamaicans to earn more and enjoy greater purchasing power, we must confront a more difficult question: What kind of economy can sustainably generate higher incomes?

The answer cannot simply be to increase salaries every few years and hope that prices do not respond. Nor can we continue building an economy heavily dependent on importing what we consume while expecting wages to rise substantially. Jamaica needs to produce more, produce better, produce competitively and sell more of what it produces to the world.