For every rand we need, there is a capitalist

ACOLLEAGUE once had a T-shirt printed which said in bold letters, “Save the Rich”. For some reason this caused a great deal of anger among the our fellow journalists, none of whom was ever likely to be among the rich and most of whom tended to lean slightly to the left.

It was far more fashionable to be wearing shirts that urged us to save the whales or the rhinos.

The colleague is no longer with us, but I am constantly reminded of her in these dark days when it seems to be fashionable to vent our anger at the rich capitalists, whether we refer to it as “white monopoly capital” or simply “monopoly capital”. (Our leaders seem divided on that issue.)

It’s a completely silly issue anyway. Capital is money and money has no colour.

When I visited my friend Harry who has been around since before the rinderpest and saw a great deal of capital come and go, he calmly put things into logical perspective, as only Harry could do.

“Look,” he said, “capitalists (whether they are black or white) can do only one of two things with their money – they can spend it, or they can invest it.

“If they spend it, that’s good for the economy. People can sell them things they have produced, or sell their services, so the money keeps the economy running.

Every rand they spend puts 14% into the tax pool in VAT.

“If they invest it, that is also good for the economy because investment creates jobs.

“It’s no good saying the government must create jobs. The government can only spend the money we pay in taxes. It is not the government’s job to build houses or shopping centres. It is the government’s job to make it worthwhile for people who have money to build them.” Only rich people can do that.

And those people are called capitalists. We cannot move forward as a country without them. That’s not rocket science. All of which brings me back to my friend’s T-shirt. We should be doing all we can to welcome rich people to our country, bearing in mind that the only two things they can do with their money are equally good for all of us.

We should make it easy for them to use their money here to make more money (and obviously create jobs in the process). That’s what capitalists do.

I may even go out and have a T-shirt printed for myself.

Last Laugh

Two young ladies of unspecified hair colour were watching the evening news on TV and they were shown a man teetering on a high bridge and threatening to jump to his death while rescue workers pleaded with him not to jump.

The one turned to her friend and said: “I bet you R10 he does jump.”

“You’re on,” said the other, and sure enough the man jumped and plummeted to his death.

The first woman reached into her handbag and pulled out a R10 note, but the other said, “No, I can’t accept that. I confess I watched the news at midday and saw him jumping.”

“Yes, so did I,” said the other, “but I didn’t think he’d do it a second time.”