Playing with Money ( Part 2)

Relative to the population of the Caribbean specifically, and the world generally, investing in the stock exchange and the other forms of  opportunity available across the globe is done by a small number of persons. There are over seven billion people in the world, the vast majority of whom know nothing of these high-end types of investments. Most Caribbean people understand little or nothing about the stock exchange, and most of us think it is a completely foreign world in which we could not survive even if we harbored a remote interest. This perspective is not going to change any time soon although I suspect we will grow out of it in about fifty years.
 In the Caribbean money is for fun things. Money is used to assist us in acquiring and doing things that make us "feel good". On St. Kitts the slogan is "tek you money worth"; what this means is that you should spend your money to have fun and as much of it as your money is able to get you. When the money is gone it does not matter as long as you had a grand time. Not being able to pay your bills the following day does not matter. You are quite content sleeping on the pavement as long as you had "a good time" getting there. This is the attitude of  too many in the Caribbean. Money is for having "a good time", after all, we are often heard to say, we only have one life to live, and we may as well have a great party living it.
 Caribbean people have great talent, and any talent can be morphed into hard cash. The region is full of great vocalists, musicians, athletes, dancers, dressmakers; name the talent and it is here under the Caribbean sun. Why then are we so poor? It is certainly not for the want of the ability to make money. It is because we see money as a plaything. We do not think  of ways to take little money and grow it. Our bank and credit union loans are for complete consumption. We think that our daughter's singing in the bathroom is the furthest she can reach, and that we have a right to demand a raise of salary because we have "worked here long".This types of thinking is based on the idea that we cannot do anything to invest in our own opportunities and in ourselves. We think that we must be "discovered" because we see people being "discovered" on television. We do not know what to do with what we have, and so we play with it all.
We may not be a wealthy area of the world, but we do not have to be as destitute as we are, and one of the biggest perpetrators of poverty in the Caribbean region is our propensity to elect politicians whose vision cannot take them beyond the Caribbean preference for part-time.