Mr. Gowon Bowe, chairman of The Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation is reported in Tribune Business… as saying:

“The respect factor that I have spoken of many times between the Government and private sector being both ways is that failure to answer or address matters that have been raised by the private sector does not breed confidence that the relationship is a two-way street. It comes across as ‘well we needed your commitment to get it done and now that we have it done we will move onto the next crisis until we need you again’.

Now that's a shot across the bow if I've ever read one, but it begs the question of why the private sector thinks they can "negotiate" policy with government?

Oh the effort put in by the Coalition for Responsible Taxation was incredible, but at the end of the day, the government did not relent on any major issue in the so called negotiations.

This is nothing new either. The private sector has "given in", or to be polite, "negotiated" itself into going along to get along now for far too many years and the long list of new laws and taxes are the creation of an ever burgeoning state. A Leviathan.

In other words the private sector tax coalition was duped, like many of us throughout the years.

When will enough be enough for this now gluttonous creature we call our Government?

Henry Hazlitt, from his 1979 Fee.org article, The Torrent of Laws… tells us:

"Whatever the outcome may be the future seems ominous. By whatever standard we measure it – the number of laws, the rate at which new ones are enacted, the multiplication of bureaus and agencies, the number of officeholders, pensioners, and relief recipients the taxpayer is forced to support, the total or relative tax load, the total per capita expenditures – there has been an accelerative growth in the size, arbitrary power, and incursion of government, and in the new prohibitions, compulsions, and costs it keeps imposing on us all."