Introduction
This article draws heavily on a commentary in Ram & McRae’s 2013 Budget Focus. One of the issues identified in the segment of the commentary dealing with inequality, a companion of poverty, is a National Minimum Wage for Guyana. Since then, the Minister of Labour announced a National Minimum Wage for the private sector of $35,000 per month, $8,000 per week or $200 per hour. I have not seen the report of the committee appointed by the Minister of Labour which made the recommendation, but it would be interesting to learn of the statistical, economic and social factors that could inform the anomaly of a private sector minimum wage that is considerably lower than the public sector minimum wage.
Another issue dealt with in the commentary was education and its relevance to poverty. Well, in an ironic twist, in what is now more than a rumour, a senior government official is selling their Pradoville 2 house for more than two hundred million dollars, an example of inequality whereby land belonging to a