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South Africa has quietly entered a phase (!?) of Quantitative Easing (printing money), to keep things afloat. Perhaps necessary now, but what the #RET crowd don't know (or don't care about) is that the ravages of inflation would eviscerate the poor. Experience has shown that #QE/
tends to put money in the hands of money-men, and not so much in the hands of ordinary people. Our wages and our savings are all diluted in value, and the effect fades away. We can accept it in a crisis, if we know that the particular crisis will pass, but it IS NOT THE ANSWER /
to poverty or inequality. #QE will only make these things worse over time. In addition to unemployment, we already have the problem of the working poor, which gets much worse. The #RET proponents have been asking for QE (hence the pressure to control the Reserve Bank), but /
their motive appears to be to steal the money, rather than to give it to the poor. The critics claim that austerity has not worked, and that corruption is only a blip masking a system that entrenches inequality inherently. But the key fact is that there is no perfect system. We /
need to generate the greatest wealth, whilst allowing the poor the greatest opportunity to thrive. Some social assistance is necessary and desirable, but too much becomes counter-productive. /
What we need is generally responsible fiscal policy, so that debt repayments are not a massive burden (oops), but where spending is specifically geared to structural change. By this, I do not mean handing out cash, or expropriating assets, but rather investing in those things /
that materially improve the lives of the poor, and doing so in a way that limits wastage and corruption. This can only be achieved by leaders with vision, purpose and determination. There is no short cut and no quick fix. Schooling, health, water, policing, roads. They must work.
