Jardine wants wealth tax to fund R500bn reconstruction
In the run-up to the elections, Daily Maverick presents major political party manifestos to help you decide which one to vote for. This is a summary of the Change Starts Now manifesto that was launched in Kliptown, Soweto, on 19 February. It sets out fund
Grants and social support policy
• End the segmentation of society into permanent “winners” and “losers”;
• Make significant increases in social and welfare grants from the cradle to the grave;
• Urgently and publicly evaluate and consider proposals for a universal basic income;
• Apply the principle, “the most vulnerable receive urgent care and can live with dignity and hope”; and
• Only 46% of South Africans have a running tap in their homes – deal with water as an emergency.
Climate change and the environment
• Promote renewable energy;
• Ensure SA becomes a global supplier of critical minerals; and
• Set up green industrial parks to become net exporters of electricity.
Crime and corruption
• Decentralise crime-fighting to improve safety; introduce more community-level policing;
• Get illegal guns out of the system through dedicated intelligence-driven, specialist firearm units; and
• Restore and strengthen trusted, targeted and specialised policing units.
Economy
• Set up a Reconstruction and Growth Fund capitalised and ring-fenced outside the fiscus to protect it. Funded by a once-off, three-year temporary reconstruction tax. This will raise R500-billion to fund immediate social protection interventions;
• Funded through a wealth tax of 1.5% a year for three years; a corporate income tax increase of 4.2 percentage points for three years (from 28% to 32.2%); a tax increase for top earners (more than R1.8-million a year) from 45% to 49.5%; and a 1%-a-year charge on retirement funds for three years;
• Focus relentlessly on electricity, logistics and water infrastructure to increase GDP growth to above 2.5%;
• Foster competition in network industries to increase growth by a further 1%;
• Use the private sector for a massive infrastructure investment drive through public-private partnerships; and
• Accelerate investment to 22% of GDP over five years to create five million jobs and reduce unemployment by 37%.
Education
• Expand early childhood education – only 1.6 million of 11 million children aged 0-4 years are in education programmes. Fix this.
Financial sector
• Nationalise the Reserve Bank;
• Start state-owned banks, including a national state bank into which all grants and pensions must be paid;
• Start a state-owned insurance company that
government employees must use; and
• Ensure that 80% of all private retirement funds are
administered and run by black-owned companies.
Food
• Emergency relief for an epidemic of hunger;
• One in five people doesn’t have enough food to eat – increase the child support grant; target support for children younger than three facing stunting;
• Increase support for subsistence and smallholder farmers; and
• Make nutritious, basic foodstuffs cheaper.
Health
• Centralise strategic decision-making and decentralise operational decisions;
• Treat public hospitals as autonomous facilities;
• Develop a bridge between the public and private health systems;
• Give provincial hospitals greater autonomy to contract;
• Incentivise medical schemes to buy from either public or private health;
• Allow private practitioners to follow their patients into the public sector; and
• Develop a universal framework for emergency care.
National Health Insurance – NHI
• Adopt the recommendations of the Health Market Inquiry, which focused on excessive private-sector costs, and make significant proposals;
• Build bridges between private and public systems;
• Decentralise health services; and
• Jardine says the NHI Bill is a plan for a R600-billion state-owned enterprise, built on a failed model.
Housing
• End spatial inequality by promoting mixed-income, high-density housing development; and
Reorient the
housing budget to increase demand-side subsidies rather than direct-supply programmes.
Jobs
• Use infrastructure investment to drive massive employment – five million opportunities; and
• (See Economy).
Land
• Convene a National Land Council to review the different
aspects of land reform.
Energy
• Focus relentlessly on electricity, logistics and water infrastructure;
• End blackouts in three to four years; and
• Focus on renewable energy.
Civil service
• Professionalise the civil service. This is a pivotal focus for Change Starts Now. It proposes the wholesale improvement of public service and administration; and
• Implement models for viable institutions of shared governance that harvest the best ideas, energy and collaborations.
Reality check
• It’s a beautiful and short manifesto that starts with an essay to envision a future state for South Africa. This resonates with the Freedom Charter, the Constitution and the National Development Plan, which all start this way.
• The tax increases for a Reconstruction Fund will require a lot of influence work, because South Africa’s small tax base is already highly taxed and poorly serviced, with high dependency levels on individuals.
Cool things
• The health, food security and early childhood education proposals are excellent. DM