El Salvador Airport possibly about the time Frank did a stopover there. Possibly at this stage it wasn’t sold off and privatised for ‘greater efficiencies” !
Drear Reader,
We should apologise for this deliberate mis- spelling but it seemed apt as it’s from our scribe from the distant North-West Frontier, when he writes to us about the trickle-down effect.
‘Is that something moist we ask running down our inner trouser leg’?
Could people still believe in the trickle-down effect? Last time we looked it, was being espoused by Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher and that was flamin years ago. Could it still be active as a principal plank of public policy?
After it’s been discredited by personal experience for years and years. Or perhaps is there something amiss?
Ronnie and Maggie pioneered ‘ the trickle-down effect’!
Is the trickle-down effect the latest in a long line of what’s old is now new again? The 19th century tycoon, who like Jeff Bezos and Elon Mush (another incident of deliberate mis- spelling) want profits and workers to be paid next to nothing? Cos they can.
Find out. For in this episode Frank lifts the lid, to expose Babushka doll like…….. (wait for it) ……ANOTHER LID!
Frank writes;
A myth extolled by the Global Economy, is the so-called trickle-down effect.
The first leg of our return journey to Australia in 1971 was an unforgettable several month odyssey by car from Canada to Panama during a to tourists relatively non-perilous socio/political window of opportunity.
A rare colour photograph of El Salvador Airport, before the colour process was also sold off for ‘greater efficiencies’.
It was when we traversed El Salvador, that we got a new insight into Foreign Aid.
Access to San Salvador’s airport was unhindered. No metal or explosives detectors and no sniffer dogs. No heavily armed guards in black Ninja uniforms nor service personnel in bright Hi-Viz fluorescent vests (lest they be run over). A small group of Salvadoran airport workers in white overalls gathered in a café on the periphery of the airport during their lunch break. Just as the best value roadside food can be found where truckies take their meal breaks, so it was at this café. Simple fare, at the lowest price imaginable: brown beans with tortillas and generous dollops of sour cream, prepared con cariño, just right.
Our budget did not stretch to routinely staying in motels, so we were grateful to be able to make use of the free airport bathrooms.
A brass plaque at the entrance to the building informed us that United States of American foreign aid had gifted the airport to the people of El Salvador. I haven’t checked but I think I’m on the money when I assert North American construction firms most likely built the airport with cheap local labour.
Ronnie tells Maggie; ” Go for your life public assets are no good for the filthy rich, that investment is better served by those who know BEST’!
Ronnie was very worried about the sex- trade and socialist medicine. That’s why the U.S Health System is ‘Rooted”.
Apart from the white-overall brigade polishing the floors or lugging luggage, and a sprinkling
of Latin looking men in business suits, the majority inside the building, also in business suits, spoke loud English with North American accents. Presumably these businessmen had come to San Salvador to make deals with the 3% who owned all the land. The Latin looking gentlemen probably were the brokers and real-estate agents and interpreters doing their bit so that their country would move forward. Pimps aren’t confined to the sex trade.
In all fairness to those who convinced the U.S. Congress to approve the gift of an airport to the lucky denizens of El Salvador, some consideration had been given to the trickle-down effect. Couples whose loud North American accents were matched by their loud clothes were sparsely distributed among their business suited compatriots. Elderly men in Hawaiian shirts, palm tree motif, and Bermuda shorts, often accompanied by beautiful younger women with East European accents, would distribute some of their greenbacks, mostly to foreign owned hotels and restaurants. The café of the brown beans, tortillas and sour cream, also benefited from the gifted airport, as virtually all of its clientele worked there. Where the runway crossed over the main road, the traffic dipped down to a short tunnel to get to the other side. The whole complex was located on a level playing field.
I don’t think I’m drawing too long a bow, when I perceive much of the money being spent on and in Yuendumu to be akin to foreign aid.
I think it is very appropriate that they refer to it as the trickle-down effect. It certainly isn’t gushing down.
Ronnie was the Full- Bottle on the trickle-down effect. He boned up on it constantly!
Over to you.
FDB