St. Maarten Anti-Poverty Platform and St. Maarten’s Consumers Coalition have a point (see story in Friday’s edition). Many workers and their families find it hard to make ends meet due to relatively high prices, including rent, and low salaries on the island. They say 13,000 households or 94 per cent are in poverty with monthly earnings of less than US $2,222.
The latter, according to research, is what a family at least requires for a decent existence, they say. The minimum wages, social assistance and pension payments must therefore all go up, while more ought to be done about reducing the cost of living.
While this can indeed be considered a serious issue, there is no magic quick-fix solution. Raising these incomes to the level mentioned may be desirable from a human point of view, but not necessarily from an economic one.
In a country characterised by free trade any added production expenses will usually be passed on to consumers. As a result, they tend to experience very little or no real increase in their purchasing power.
This problem can be addressed by placing more products in the basket of essentials for which government sets maximum rates, but there are limits to doing so without interfering too much in the market. Fair competition between the various supermarkets and other stores should, of course, help keep prices down, but no entrepreneur in their right mind is going to sell everything under cost.
As stated before, the frequent price lists and comparisons in the newspaper can be quite useful because they provide shoppers with the ability to make better-informed choices.
