Promises, Promises

My friend Franklin Cudjoe, executive director of IMANI (the free-market think tank in Ghana) sent me this excellent article on the ridiculous promises politicians make to get elected.

Some choice excerpts:

Provide free electricity to the masses by means of ‘permanent magnets’.

‘Grow’ donkeys in sufficient numbers to transform the agricultural capacity of the North, in an integrated pastoral system in which the donkeys provide both free ‘fertilizer’ and mechanization-substitutes.

He concludes:

Nearly all political schemes are feasible in a certain context. The true measure of feasibility comes when all the schemes are hung together and their costs summed up against projected inflows of resources to determine whether the overall political program is viable or not.

It may be entirely logical to argue for the entire northern corridor to be turned into an irrigation belt in order to feed a proposed cereal industry, but the question is whether in the inevitable trade-off that must occur for that to happen we are happy to sacrifice low public debt, NHIS concessions or the school feeding program in view of the expected levels of tax gain and donor aid.

A simple principle, yes, but one that seems to escape politicians around the world.