There are moments when charts speak more clearly than speeches.
A set of long-run economic charts — drawn from respected international sources — compare countries that started poor and became rich, countries that began with promise and stalled, and countries that once stood side by side but today live in different economic universes.
Taken together, they tell a story the Caribbean cannot afford to ignore. We will begin with the two Koreas, as this natural experiment -- sadly, for North Korea -- tells a story of breakout from the immiseration pointed out by Malthus in 1798, and of relapse due to a leaky tyre economy. A story we must heed.
Two Koreas, One Starting Line, Two Destinies
In the early 1950s, North and South Korea emerged from a devastating war. Both were shattered. Both were poor. Both faced geopolitical pressure and scarce resources. Neither had oil, gold, or vast land.
Today, South Korea is a high-income industrial power. North Korea remains trapped in scarcity.
What matters here is not ideology or rhetoric, but results over time. When their economies are placed on the same chart, using the same scale, one line bends sharply upward decade after decade. The other rises briefly, flattens, and then sinks.
This divergence did not happen overnight. It took patience, discipline, and institutional consistency. South Korea invested heavily in skills, industry, exports, and technology. It made mistakes—but it learned from them. Growth was allowed to compound.
North Korea never built the machinery that turns effort into lasting capacity. Short-term surges faded. The system could not hold gains.
The lesson is blunt: growth that cannot be retained is not growth.
Singapore and Jamaica: The Comparison That Still Hurts
Closer to home, the comparison between Singapore and Jamaica is even more unsettling.
In the late 1960s, Jamaica stood close to the world average in income per person. Singapore was poorer. Both were newly independent, ethnically diverse, politically tense, and strategically exposed. Neither had natural resources to spare.
Then the lines separate.
Singapore’s income rises steadily, crossing the world average and continuing upward. Jamaica’s flattens—and slowly slips below the global trend.
One detail matters deeply: the break occurs in the early 1970s, around a major political turning point. From that moment, Jamaica’s economy never recovers its early momentum. What had looked like the beginning of a takeoff becomes a long plateau.
This is not a moral judgment. It is a structural one.
Once an economy loses momentum—once confidence, continuity, and investment learning are disrupted—it is extraordinarily hard to restart the engine.
Barbados Shows the Middle Ground—and the Limit
Adding Barbados to the picture sharpens the point.
Barbados has been more stable, more institutionally consistent, and more cautious than Jamaica. Its income per person rises higher and holds better. But it does not break away. It does not compound into high-income status.
This matters because it shows that stability alone is not enough. To truly escape, countries must do something more difficult: they must build productivity year after year, generation after generation.
It is helpful to insert the original case, the UK:
We see here, both the pattern of a beginning of a J-curve takeoff and a leaky tyre injection, surge and relapse due to the Wars over the French Revolution. Illustrating:
Notably absent, however, is strong evidence of a J-curve takeoff in the Williams thesis window that causally leads to where we see the UK now. This does not mean slavery linked finance and sea trade were not part of the UK’s development story; just, that it was a baked in part of the essentially pre-industrial revolution transformational system. The UK's real sustained J-curve takeoff is mid-late in C19, with mobile steam engines [railroads, steam ships], high volume low cost steel [Bessemer and Open Hearth], electricity, chemicals and increasingly concrete, also early telecommunications [telegraphy, telephony, later on wireless].
It is this context that led Mackinder to suggest that "heartland" continental powers would emerge to challenge Mahan's sea power domination of the world. Indeed, the history of C20 can be analysed in terms of two German pushes and one by Russia. Sadly, the current war in Ukraine can be seen as a C21 renewal of that pattern, driven by Russia's perpetual fear of encirclement.
Similarly, for other Caribbean territories and the “fragile” economies:
Here, we see the typical fragile economy looks a lot like Haiti, and Jamaica is just a bit better than the average for such, on level. But, there are two cases of a struggling but sustained J-curve breakaway, The Dominican Republic and Cuba. The latter also includes an almost text-book leaky tyre episode, a chilling parallel to the case of North Korea, where in both cases the collapse of the USSR led to economic relapse. Sadly, for North Korea that malthusian trend pattern meant famine with perhaps a million deaths.
Yes, we are looking at a strongly stamped general pattern, where general purpose technology driven Kondratiev waves stack to feed a long term, compounding action exponential growth that results in J-curves.
The Middle-Income Trap Is Not a Theory—it Is a Crowd
When economists talk about the “middle-income trap,” they are not speculating. They are describing a crowded place.
Most countries that reach moderate income levels stop there. Only a handful push through: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Israel, Ireland.
What do these countries have in common?
Not perfection. Not ideology. Not even the absence of corruption.
They share something more practical:
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long-term policy credibility,
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serious investment in skills and technology,
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export competitiveness,
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and institutions that learn rather than reset every election cycle.
They found ways to turn sacrifice today into capacity tomorrow.
Technology Is the Escape Route—And the Risk
Every successful breakout coincides with a technological wave.
The United States’ post-war surge followed massive investment in science and engineering. East Asia’s rise rode electronics and manufacturing. The digital revolution transformed global productivity again.
Now we stand at the edge of another wave: artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced digital systems.
This is not science fiction. It is already reshaping logistics, health care, education, finance, and manufacturing.
For small economies, the danger is not adoption—it is late adoption.
When productivity tools spread unevenly, those who move early compound advantages. Those who hesitate fall behind even if they “grow.”
The Quiet Killers: Energy Costs and Credibility
Two silent factors appear again and again in the charts.
First, energy costs. High, unreliable electricity prices quietly suffocate productivity. They punish factories, offices, data systems, and households alike. No economy can modernise on unstable power.
Second, credibility. Investors, engineers, and entrepreneurs do not respond to speeches. They respond to signals. Threatening language, policy reversals, and politicised economics impose costs even when no law changes.
Growth requires trust in the future.
The Caribbean’s Narrow Window
The Caribbean does not lack talent. It does not lack ideas. It does not lack access to technology.
What it lacks—dangerously—is time.
Once an economy settles into low growth, reversing course becomes exponentially harder. Debt rises. Young people leave. Institutions hollow out. The charts flatten.
The choice is not between left and right, state and market, or ideology and pragmatism.
The choice is simpler—and harsher:
Do we build the capacity to grow steadily, quietly, and relentlessly—or do we continue mistaking temporary relief for progress?
The economy is not a fixed pie. But it is also not infinitely forgiving.
The charts are already drawn. The only question left is whether we choose to learn from them—or add ourselves to them. END
