5 Reasons Why You Should Invest In The Stock Market

1. The Stock Market ensures that Jamaica is financially secure because it is vital to the growth of the economy.

2. You will own stocks. This means that you will become a shareholder and own a slice of a public company like LIME or Grace Kennedy LTD.

3. It provides an additional source of income. Many persons are able to acquire land and housing from stock investment.

4. Any Jamaican from any income level who has some surplus funds, no matter how small can be an investor. However, DO NOT invest any money you will need to pay your bills and other immediate living expenses.

5. The earlier you become involved in the market, the more experience you will have.

*You can learn how to become an investor or how to enlist your Start Up, Small or Medium Sized Company on the stock market by visiting the Jamaica Stock Exchange at 40 Harbour Street, Kingston. You can also call them at 967-3271, or email them at communications@jamstockex.com. Finally, visit their website for further reading and queries by clicking this link.

Classism in Kingston, Jamaica

Classism is an issue that has affected the Jamaica society since the days of slavery. The capital city, Kingston is divided into two major groups; the upper and the lower class.

Members from the upper class dominate the corporate realm, and enjoy the benefits of a modern society. These individuals are usually Euro-centric in nature while members of the lower class are mostly Afro centric.

As a final year journalism student at the University of the West Indies, Mona, I recently produced a radio documentary whichis entitled THE UPTOWN- DOWNTOWN DIVIDE. This documentary goes in-depth about the issue of classism in Kingston, and features residents from Uptown and Downtown, University lecturers who are qualified to speak on the issue, and a lot more. The historical aspect of the issue is explained for a better understanding of why the society is the way it is today.

The separation of the two social classes is looked at from a geographical, stereotypical, and financial point of view, where education is seen as the most popular means of social mobility. Skin bleaching and police brutality also play a major role in propelling classism in Kingston.

Supervision was given by Dr Canute James (Lecturer) and Miss Fae Ellington (Lecturer & Broadcaster). The documentary was narrated by Lorraine Mendez from the Jamaica Information Service (JIS).

If you wish to listen to the documentary, and become educated about the issue of classism, then click this link which will direct you to my Dropbox account.

Why is Jamaica Poor?

(Photo: An aerial view of Kingston, Jamaica).

It’s an embarrassing but inescapable truth about Jamaica – most of the time, we’re a complete mess. From arresting criminals to developing industries, diversifying exports to simplifying taxes, creating wealth to erasing intolerance, Jamaica lags behind much of the world.

Our GDP per capita is less than half the global average. According to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, almost one in three men and one in two women in their early twenties can’t find work. Forty per cent of all the jobs in the country are in farming, fishing and car repair. Construction and tourism provide a quarter of the rest. And those hard-baked jobs pay about J$11,500 a week, not enough to afford the computer to read this article.

What’s a beautiful banana republic to do? Two hundred years ago, Jamaica was the richest colony in the British Empire by a distance, and its citizens, like Simon Taylor and Thomas Thistlewood, the most wealthy. Falmouth famously had running water before New York. How did we go from such prosperity in 1814 to such poverty today? Why is Jamaica so poor?

It’s the billion-dollar question, one the best and brightest social scientists have been chewing on for decades. Here’s the most influential living economist, Robert Lucas: “Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia? If so, what, exactly? Once one starts to think about [it], it is hard to think about anything else.”

It’s easy to know what makes a market healthy – just write down what the First World does. Modern economists agree that balancing state budgets, suppressing inflation, allowing free trade, and investing in infrastructure is the way to go. But what’s good for the country is not necessarily good for the government. In a democracy, where politicians only last a few years at the top, it makes more sense to spend as much as you can, protect the interests of powerful friends, and skimp on infrastructure apart from big, prestigious projects.

Still, with selfish people in power everywhere, why do rich countries stay rich and poor countries stay poor? In 2001, a Turkish economist, Daron Acemoglu, solved an amazing, disturbing piece of the puzzle. He discovered that he could predict the current GDP of 70 countries, including Jamaica, by looking at the mortality rate of white men in the 1800s. Wait, what? How in the name of Paul Bogle are those two things even related?

It turns out that wherever European colonisers survived in large numbers, like Australia and North America, they imported the rule of law from home. But where they mostly succumbed to disease, like much of Africa and the West Indies, they didn’t bother to set up strong institutions. Instead, they set a precedent of grab-and-go, short-term, extractive policymaking that persists, like the viruses they feared, to this very day. Out of many, one example – inefficient bureaucracies that encourage and even tolerate widespread corruption.

Tim Harford, yet another economist, explains: “Development is thwarted because the rules and laws of the society do not encourage projects or businesses which would be to the common good. The small amount of education and technology and infrastructure [in a country like Jamaica] could be much better used if the society was organised to reward good, productive ideas. But it is not.” By contrast, America’s patent system, effective courts and venture capital paved the way, as much as the literal investment in highways, for a good idea like FedEx to flourish. In turn, FedEx created the delivery network for Amazon, whose supercomputers now enable Netflix, and the virtuous cycle continues.

This is all very depressing, because it suggests the problem of poverty operates on a scale larger than anyone’s lifetime, that as a colonised people, we were predestined to struggle far past Independence, and that we are our own worst enemy in implementing solutions. But depression is not despair. We have to find a way to align the short-term interests of our elected officials with the long-term interests of the economy. How to do that remains unanswered, but with the world’s best and brightest on the job, it’ll probably only take another 200 years.

**(Article was taken from the Jamaica Gleaner Online)