Readers’Views
Joblessness will get even worse, and don’t blame Covid alone
Our dire unemployment situation is unfortunately likely to get worse, not better, in the coming years.
The reason is our economy comprises an excessively taxed, tiny productive base, with a predatory political class feeding off corrupt tenders and inflated salaries.
Needless to say, this is not an economic model that is likely to generate prosperity and job opportunities for the country.
Each day brings a new corruption scandal. Our electorate votes for the ANC regardless. It is a recipe for economic devastation and large-scale job destruction.
Poo Bear, on BusinessLIVE
Covid will be blamed, but, to be honest, we were heading this way [higher unemployment] before the pandemic — all it did was speed up the inevitable.
Without meaningful economic reform, investor-friendly policies, a relaxation of BEE rules and less talk of expropriation of property rights, it’ll only get worse.
Ironic, especially so for the poor. Guyck van Heerden, on BusinessLIVE
Wait until the cohort of school-leavers and those leaving tertiary education enter the job market at the start of this calendar year, that is, in the first quarter, which will show up in the next quarterly update.
Since the intake is 1.2-million, expect the annual labour supply side shock to be of similar magnitude.
Covid-19 added pain to an already dead corpse, killed over time by ANC policies, non-policies, actions and inactions. Things enacted were invariably wrong and things undone indubitably what was required.
Budgeting for doom and gloom
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it once more (with four-part harmony and feeling) — finance minister Tito Mboweni is proving to be as effective a finance minister as the weekend special who had only four days to prove himself.
The budget rests basically on a pledge to reduce public sector remuneration (fat chance of that happening) and austerity cuts to almost everything else.
The funding of vaccines shows how little this minister and the government care about the wellbeing of ordinary citizens, and will do little to prevent further economic decline.
There is little except the corporate tax cut that will promote economic growth, and that is debatable … as I have said before, the so-called infrastructure fund is unlikely to promote significant growth if you look at the priority projects.