Introduction, proximate origin
Some bizarre motives have been attributed to me for naming the suggested UBI mechanism for eradicating persistent poverty in Guyana the Buxton Proposal. For the record, although my academic life [as teacher, researcher, author] has indisputably contributed to the formulation of an oil-for-cash transfers to households Proposal; its immediate origins lay elsewhere, in pure serendipity. I have been contributing to this Sunday series on Guyana’s emerging oil and gas industry since 2016. And, starting in January 2019 I drafted a Petroleum Road Map, which expounds, more fully, on several themes in the Proposal.
Based on these writings I was invited by the Buxton First of August Movement (FAM), to make a Presentation for Emancipation Day 2018. That Presentation is the immediate reason for its name; the Buxton Proposal. A year later, I elaborated on the original FAM Presentation at a WPA follow-up Symposium held at Critchlow Labour College on September 23, 2019.