The US is said to be the largest giver of foreign assistance: this president Trump wishes to curtail when it comes to countries unfriendly to the US. Understandably, the threat of cutting off aid to countries that vote against the US at the UN’s smacks of coercion, but one cannot really take issue with the principle at stake; can one?
Judge Dennis Davis, this week, raised the question of how the government is going to be able to fund the economic stimulation package announced by Ramaphosa. He noted that ahead of the election no public wage bills will be cut. He also noted that whilst wealth taxes may appear to be an answer, they do not bring in a lot of money; in any event, owing to our declining levels of tax morality, such taxes do not appear to solve the problem of funding the promised stimulation package. He mentioned a proposal that I have heard before: that top companies should contribute 1% of their capitalisation value to a fund which would be used solely for the purpose of developing the economy: call it redistribution (redistribution sounds good, but tax really is little else other than that?).
Human capital may be defined as the level of education and health of a population and is a determinant of economic growth. A bunch of academics from the University of Washington, Seattle and the University of California, Los Angeles did a moerse lot of calculations and came up with a ranking, which lists Finland as number 1, South Korea as number 6, and the USA as number 27. South Africa comes in at 144th. This calculation has been roundly criticised, but is interesting nevertheless: Reference
