Readers’Views

Bank deluded in believing interest rates can control inflation rate

Hilary Joffe’s column, “Bank governor gets inflation goal in while the going is good” (September 19), refers.

It can only be a “serious conversation” (on the inflation target) and “an honest one” if the Reserve Bank will ever understand that the inflation rate is determined by all the local and international political and economic factors that have an influence on the supply and the demand of goods and services.

The force of its interest policy can never be as strong as the operation of the market forces in the economy.

I again challenge the Bank to prove its claim that the changes in interest rates can control the inflation rate, for which there is absolutely no evidence.

The same is true for the value of the currency and the creation of economic growth, which are only determined by the operation of market forces, the most basic economic principle in the economy.

The Reserve Bank, just as the Federal Reserve in the US and the European Central Bank, still believes its interest rate policy can control the inflation, exchange and economic growth rates. That is the single biggest delusion in economic science. Fanie Brink, on businessLIVE

Ways to deal with anti-vaxxers

Technically, the government can enforce the vaccine. Nobody is arguing that they have freedom of choice when it comes to wearing a seat belt.

But people do not have to be forced. If they choose not to vaccinate, they simply need to produce a valid PCR test result every Monday when they pitch for work. At their own cost.

Workdays missed as a result of adverse test results or the absence of a PCR test will count against annual sick leave, and when that runs out it becomes unpaid leave — to a point of incapacity and dismissal.

Ditto access to restaurants, bars and public places: vaccination or current PCR. Plus loaded premiums, like for smokers, for health and life insurance.

The medicine is there. Those who refuse to take it should not pass the burden of their behaviour on to the rest of society.

MT Wessels, on businessLIVE

What is so difficult is the novelty and suddenness of the Covid pandemic. The government and society had years to contest, argue and agree on measures like seat belts and smoking bans — think alcohol consumption or fattening foods now.

But an agreed approach to Covid had to be found in a matter of months, if not weeks — a clear impossibility.

What is required is not for the government to issue edicts, which can provoke defiance, but for society to change — and that happens slowly.