Monday, June 20, 2016

151. What to do to fix our economy

http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2015/08/13/growth-focus-the-remedy-for-economy-biased-against-jobs

... a set of recommendations to increase employment in SA before a generation of South Africans grew up with little hope of ever working.

We suggested that all government policies focus on growth and that current efforts at asset redistribution in the mining and agricultural sectors are misguided, that the minimum wage is too high, that employers need more flexibility to hire workers, that state-owned enterprises be fixed (starting with Eskom) and that much more attention be paid to how legislation developed in Pretoria is implemented at the local level.

We also said that it is absolutely necessary to fix SA’s grossly underperforming educational sector.

Nor are business and labour left off the hook. We sense some collusion between big business and big labour around the high-wage economy.

Big business can cope with high wages by employing fewer workers and using more machines and robots, while big labour’s members benefit from high salaries.

The losers are small and medium-sized businesses that cannot change production mixes easily, and the unemployed.

BY JEFFREY HERBST AND GREG MILLS AUGUST 13 2015, 05:56

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