T&T outranks China, India & Russia in standard of living

[halfbreed_1]

This coun­try has ranked 49th—high­er than 142 oth­er well-known coun­tries glob­al­ly—in terms of stan­dard of liv­ing. That is, in terms of Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) based on pur­chas­ing-pow­er-par­i­ty (PPP) per capi­ta.

This is in­di­cat­ed in a Glob­al Fi­nance ar­ti­cle from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (World Eco­nom­ic Out­look) on the World’s Rich­est Coun­tries 2019.

The ar­ti­cle stat­ed that the wealth­i­est na­tions are among the tini­est glob­al­ly. The rank­ings which were cal­cu­lat­ed on val­ues are ex­pressed in cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al dol­lars, to the near­est whole dol­lar, re­flect­ing a sin­gle year’s (2018) cur­ren­cy ex­change rates and PPP ad­just­ments.​

The ar­ti­cle ex­am­ined how a coun­try is seen as rich, “Es­pe­cial­ly in an era of grow­ing in­come in­equal­i­ty be­tween the rich and every­one else. While gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) mea­sures the val­ue of all goods and ser­vices pro­duced in a na­tion, di­vid­ing a coun­try’s GDP by the num­ber of the full-time res­i­dents is a bet­ter way of de­ter­min­ing how rich or poor one coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion is rel­a­tive to an­oth­er’s.”

Ac­cord­ing to the ar­ti­cle, “The rea­son why ‘rich’ of­ten equals ‘small’ then be­comes clear: these coun­tries’ economies are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly large com­pared to their com­par­a­tive­ly small pop­u­la­tions.”

“How­ev­er, on­ly when tak­ing in­to ac­count in­fla­tion rates and the cost of lo­cal goods and ser­vices can we get a more ac­cu­rate pic­ture of a na­tion’s av­er­age stan­dard of liv­ing: the re­sult­ing fig­ure is what is called pur­chas­ing pow­er par­i­ty (PPP), which is of­ten ex­pressed in­ter­na­tion­al dol­lars in or­der to al­low com­par­isons be­tween dif­fer­ent coun­tries,” the ar­ti­cle stat­ed


In the list, TT ranked 49th, beat­ing out Chi­na, In­dia, Pak­istan, near­ly all African states, sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries—in­clud­ing Greece—and most Caribbean coun­tries: Ja­maica, St. Kitts and Nevis, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Lu­cia, Bar­ba­dos, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Grena­da Do­mini­ca, Haiti.

Re­gion­al­ly, on­ly the Ba­hamas was above T&T along with de­vel­oped na­tions in­clud­ing the US, UK France, Sau­di Ara­bia, Switzer­land, Ger­many, Spain, Is­rael and oth­ers.

T&T al­so topped Rus­sia, sev­er­al Asian and Mid­dle East coun­tries in­clud­ing Lebanon, Mex­i­co and South Amer­i­can states in­clud­ing Chile, Uruguay, Ar­genti­na, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Brazil, Colom­bia, Suri­name Pe­ru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Guyana, Guatemala, Be­lize, El Sal­vador, Bo­livia, Nicaragua and Hon­duras.

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

Great is the PNM???

[vaiostation]

Next they go say that carnival is de greatest show on earth.

[Dizzy28]

Russia and China are dictatorships and India has the largest poor population in the world by absolute numbers. I would hope we are above them for standard of living

[maj. tom]

Fake News at its finest. Wouldn't be surprised if wrong/manipulated data was fed into that "study" by certain data mining companies that were paid to do a job.

But allyuh not feeling the better standard of living the PNM has offered us? It eh even have f*cking USD forex and proper quality vehicle fuel, but it better than USA ent.

[j.o.e]

Travel a little and you’ll realize despite our problems how good we have it. Sad thing is we do relatively good with poor governance, lack of work ethic and systems. Imagine how much better we could’ve been

[whiteliver]

Travel a little and you’ll realize despite our problems how good we have it. Sad thing is we do relatively good with poor governance, lack of work ethic and systems. Imagine how much better we could’ve been

quoted for truth

[neilsingh100]

Fake News at its finest. Wouldn't be surprised if wrong/manipulated data was fed into that "study" by certain data mining companies that were paid to do a job.

But allyuh not feeling the better standard of living the PNM has offered us? It eh even have f*cking USD forex and proper quality vehicle fuel, but it better than USA ent.

The source of the data is from IMF World Economic Outlook 2019
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPPC@WEO/TTO

[halfbreed_1]

Travel a little and you’ll realize despite our problems how good we have it. Sad thing is we do relatively good with poor governance, lack of work ethic and systems. Imagine how much better we could’ve been

I’ve never met a group of people other than trinis who discredit everything positive! Lol its comical

[Dizzy28]

They could have compared us to Sweden , Norway, Singapore, South Korea etc. Why choose those 3?

[maj. tom]

Fake News at its finest. Wouldn't be surprised if wrong/manipulated data was fed into that "study" by certain data mining companies that were paid to do a job.

But allyuh not feeling the better standard of living the PNM has offered us? It eh even have f*cking USD forex and proper quality vehicle fuel, but it better than USA ent.

The source of the data is from IMF World Economic Outlook 2019
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPPC@WEO/TTO

You don't understand the concept of Fake News.
Fake news come from legitimate sources. Like how they invaded Iraq based on good and sure intel of WMDs. How did that turn out? Was any of it true? The questions need to be asked are how the data is collected and is the data real and true? Any idea can be manipulated and then presented for public support. Do you believe, do you see the real evidence of life in Trinidad reflecting what the report says?

Cambridge Analytica has been in the news recently. Why don't you do some catch up reading and see if you can understand?

[88sins]

India? Yeah, easy enough to believe that.
China? Depending on who you are and where in China you live. Same thing for Russia.

[adnj]

Travel a little and you’ll realize despite our problems how good we have it. Sad thing is we do relatively good with poor governance, lack of work ethic and systems. Imagine how much better we could’ve been

quoted for truth

Gut wrenching poverty in Asia and Africa.

[maj. tom]

https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/sad-chr ... b4a7b25245

http://archive.is/NLejF

[maj. tom]

Here is a dose of reality for all the proud and brave patriots in this thread:

IDB report: T&T corrupt and slow
Tue Dec 24 2019

A new re­port from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) de­scribes gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tions in T&T and across the Caribbean as a “hotbed of cor­rup­tion” where cit­i­zens are com­pelled to pay bribes to ac­cess cer­tain ser­vices.

In the re­port, Wait no More: Cit­i­zens, Red Tape and Dig­i­tal Gov­ern­ment, au­thors Ben­jamin Roseth and An­gela Reyes state that “man­u­al gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tions, face-to-face in­ter­ac­tions, and the lack of stan­dard­ized process­es mean that trans­ac­tions are vul­ner­a­ble to dis­hon­est be­hav­iour.”

Ref­er­enc­ing da­ta from a 2019 Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al sur­vey, they said in five Caribbean coun­tries 19 per cent of re­spon­dents said that had paid a bribe to ac­cess a pub­lic ser­vice.

“Da­ta from this same sur­vey show that the per­cent­age of peo­ple who pay bribes in ex­change for ser­vices varies through­out the re­gion: in Guyana 27 per cent of those sur­veyed said they had to pay a bribe to ac­cess a pub­lic ser­vice, the high­est pro­por­tion in the re­gion, fol­lowed by 20 per cent in The Ba­hamas and 17 per cent in both Ja­maica and Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Bar­ba­dos reg­is­tered the low­est rate, with on­ly 9 per cent of those sur­veyed re­port­ing hav­ing paid a bribe to re­ceive a pub­lic ser­vice.

The au­thors claim that these rates var­ied ac­cord­ing to the ser­vice be­ing re­quest­ed. The re­search by Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al found that in the Caribbean, pub­lic util­i­ties record­ed the high­est rate of bribes where 19 per cent of cit­i­zens said they paid a bribe to ac­cess a ser­vice. Al­so, 15 per cent of re­spon­dents paid a bribe to ob­tain an iden­ti­ty doc­u­ment. For po­lice ser­vices, this fig­ure reached 18 per cent.

The ref­er­ence pop­u­la­tion for these sta­tis­tics, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, in­clud­ed peo­ple who at­tempt­ed to ac­cess a pub­lic ser­vice in the past year. The sur­vey asked re­spon­dents for each type of ser­vice: “How of­ten, if ever, did you have to pay a bribe, give a gift, or do a favour to (pub­lic of­fi­cial in X in­sti­tu­tion) to get the (ser­vice X) you need­ed?”

The re­spon­dents in­clud­ed in the over­all bribery per­cent­age are those who re­spond­ed “once,” “twice,” “a few times” or “of­ten.”

When Guardian Me­dia reached out to var­i­ous of­fi­cials about their knowl­edge of peo­ple ac­cept­ing bribes, they said that they were not aware.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said: “No I am not. If you have any cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion on these very se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions I would like you to pro­vide to me please.”

There was a sim­i­lar re­sponse from Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte.

“No I am not and if you have in­for­ma­tion on that please send it to me,” he told Guardian Me­dia

Ap­proached for com­ment, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith point­ed out that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) does not in­ves­ti­gate based on “a Caribbean poll or al­le­ga­tions by anony­mous per­sons from around the Caribbean.”

“There have been dozens of re­ports made on TTPS po­lice of­fi­cers per­tain­ing to such in­ci­dents and with every re­port, it is thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed,” he said.

Grif­fith said at times the in­ves­ti­ga­tions proved the al­le­ga­tions to have no mer­it and there had been “sev­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tions where­by po­lice of­fi­cers have in­deed been charged.”

The Com­mis­sion­er said this ev­i­dence shows that the TTPS “acts on such mat­ters if and when called up­on to do so.” He ex­plained, how­ev­er, “that the num­ber of such cas­es is very low in com­par­i­son to the num­ber of TTPS of­fi­cers on du­ty.”

Ac­cord­ing to the IDB re­port, one of the rea­sons cit­i­zens re­sort to pay­ing bribes is be­cause of the length of the trans­ac­tion times for gov­ern­ment ser­vices which Roseth and Reyes de­scribed as “slow and (they) gen­er­ate trans­ac­tion costs for both cit­i­zens and firms.”

“Com­plet­ing gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tions re­quires a lot of ef­fort. Jour­neys, queues, wait­ing at the counter, fill­ing out forms, read­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions, seek­ing in­for­ma­tion, send­ing let­ters, or even learn­ing to use a new sys­tem or web­site: in short, a gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tion can be all-con­sum­ing,” they wrote.

The av­er­age amount of hours spent to get a trans­ac­tion com­plet­ed in T&T is 3.9 hours. Guyana had the slow­est times, where it takes a cit­i­zen on av­er­age 5.9 hours to com­plete one trans­ac­tion. Bar­ba­dos was al­so above the Caribbean av­er­age, at 4.8 hours on av­er­age, while in Ja­maica it took on av­er­age 4.1 hours. The Ba­hamas had the low­est av­er­age times of the Caribbean at 2.8 hours.

Da­ta from Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al al­so showed that Caribbean cit­i­zens spent an av­er­age of 4.3 hours to com­plete their last gov­ern­ment trans­ac­tion and “this refers to ac­tive time, such as trans­porta­tion, wait­ing in line and at the counter, and ex­cludes time spent wait­ing for a res­o­lu­tion out­side of the pub­lic of­fice.”

Roseth and Reyes re­port­ed that mul­ti­ple in­ter­ac­tions gen­er­at­ed trans­ac­tion costs for cit­i­zens even if every in­di­vid­ual vis­it is short, “as cit­i­zens must spend time and re­sources com­mut­ing to pub­lic of­fices and ask mul­ti­ple times for leave at work, among oth­er costs.”

These mul­ti­ple in­ter­ac­tions al­so im­ply ef­fi­cien­cy loss­es for the gov­ern­ment which is forced to ear­mark more re­sources for pro­vid­ing cit­i­zen ser­vices due to in­ef­fi­cien­cy.

[rebound]

Those respondents lied, we cannot be just 17%, almost everyone in Trini has to bribe them corrupt public servants, directly or indirectly. Its more like 75%.

[l33t2]

Those respondents lied, we cannot be just 17%, almost everyone in Trini has to bribe them corrupt public servants, directly or indirectly. Its more like 75%.

Yea 17% is a gross lie, unless they're using the entire population as the sample space. Obviously those under 17 ain't bribe yet (until they go license office).

[l33t2]

India? Yeah, easy enough to believe that.
China? Depending on who you are and where in China you live. Same thing for Russia.

Exactly, all of the above countries have massive inequality and corruption allowing maybe 10% of the population to live like first worldes while the majority of the population are essentially paid slave.

We know what a sheit hole India is. Russia, aside from the rich are the same or worse off than the average Trini in many ways.

China is an utter hell hole for the majority of the population. No freedom and 7 day work weeks, the middle class is growing but they are definitely poorer than the average Trini.

We have a very overvalued currency though, this bubble we live in is slowly bursting and we'll see what we're truly worth (hint, we were never better in anyway compares to Jamaica or Guyana).

[aaron17]

I think we win in crime to?

[Redman]

The more allyuh talk- the more it seems that everywhere is the same
A few Rich, plenty poor and a setta people fighting up on the fringes.

Corruption -mostly undetected, is at best a guestimate pulled out of some ones ass

[DTAC]

Woman goes missing after going outside to pee. In 2019. We really better than Those countries? Please.

[rspann]

A DCP told me today that that one is more than meets the eye.

[matr1x]

If you think trini have bad work ethic....ask, "which trini?"



And why?



Slaves had the best work ethic by that reasoning

[Redman]

A DCP told me today that that one is more than meets the eye.

Quite a few of them are.

[88sins]

Travel a little and you’ll realize despite our problems how good we have it. Sad thing is we do relatively good with poor governance, lack of work ethic and systems. Imagine how much better we could’ve been

yuh know, i'm amazed at how some people just love to parrot whatever they find sounding like sense, even when is total nonsense.
Just because a so-called businessman in the private sector pissin mad that his employees refuse to be worked to the bone for the pittance of a salary he want to pay, doesn't mean the workers have no work ethics, they just not motivated to give their all for a next to nothing income. there MUST be a balance between work and pay. pay a fair wage, and you can expect and get a fair day's work from an employee, and if he fails to deliver, fire him and get someone else. If you were to hire a lawyer to argue a traffic ticket and pay him the fee for that job only, Would you expect him to accept it witha smile & maximum effort when you tell him that when that case almost done look dis murder case & 3 multimillion dollar conveyances and 50 estates to file do so hurry up & don't expect compensation for those? Well, this is what often happens in the private sector with those exploitative skinflints calling themselves businessmen, and when they don't get their way with NOBODY they say everyone has a bad/no work ethic. They love to compare employees performance to their own, saying they had to work 18hr days, plenty stress, lack of sleep, endless sacrifices one after the other, etc when they started the business. My response to those that do that is simple. Who the hell else you expect to sacrifice & kill themselves to build your business? Is your business so is you hadda sacrifice, because if you get a fool to do what you doing for your business you will NEVER pay him as well as you pay yourself, first thing they go say, 'is my business so is my money'.
Take a look at the security industry here as an example.
In most of them, workers are treated literally worse than the dogs the company keeps. I mean this, one BIG security company actually tell a worker that he dog worth mort to the company than the worker. Bear in mind, these are people with families that putting their lives at risk daily, some working 72 hrs straight being bounced from one location to the next. One company I know of would "charge" employees for anything and everything they thought they could, simply to deduct money from the workers salary. So much so, they would even "charge" off duty officers if that officer was seen on a location when he's off duty and another officer is there, & they called the charge fraternizing. You find that fair?

Son, work ethic is a characteristic of individuals, not a population. If an employer finds his workers have no "work ethics" the employer needs to look at 2 things: his own hiring practices and his own HR management skills, including compenstion & wages. If he not doing that he just looking to cast blame on others for his own total lack of "ethics"

[mad]

Travel a little and you’ll realize despite our problems how good we have it. Sad thing is we do relatively good with poor governance, lack of work ethic and systems. Imagine how much better we could’ve been

Exactly.
Despite the crime and corruption we are doing better than a lot of countries. And yes if you take those two away we can actually be a developed nation.
Even in our neighboring Caribbean countries you can see that we are doing much better. Although it stated that Bahamas is better off than T&T; based on my experience there I would highly disagree.
What has us going is our Middle Class but the rate we are going now and the numerous job loses happening in T&T we could be well heading in a state like India and Africa or worst yet Venezuela.

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

Who would think that our 3rd world standard of living outranks 4th world countries with some of the poorest standard of living and 0 human rights?

[zoom rader]

The only trini people that like TT are the law breakers.

They get away with crimes, fines and penalties here than in any first would nation.

[EFFECTIC DESIGNS]

The only trini people that like TT are the law breakers.

They get away with crimes, fines and penalties here than in any first would nation.

Correct is right, I know a guy who praises Trini as a paradise while he throws all his garbage in the first public drain he can find, the ones who love this country the most are the litter sh!ts, you does ever wonder if these dutty fckers does throw trash in their house the same way they do in public?

[zoom rader]

The only trini people that like TT are the law breakers.

They get away with crimes, fines and penalties here than in any first would nation.

Correct is right, I know a guy who praises Trini as a paradise while he throws all his garbage in the first public drain he can find, the ones who love this country the most are the litter sh!ts, you does ever wonder if these dutty fckers does throw trash in their house the same way they do in public?

Eliteauto go say you a self hater.