Blogs

Piketty’s fix for inequality in sync with development plan

Prof Raymond Parsons
ON AUGUST 16 2012, the South African police intervened in a labour conflict between workers at the Marikana platinum mine near Rustenburg and the mine owners — the stockholders of Lonmin Inc based in London. Police fired on the strikers with live ammunition. Thirty-five miners were killed …. This episode reminds us that the question of what share of output should go to wages and what share to profits — in other words, how should the income from production be divided between labour and capital? — has always been at the heart of distributional conflict."
Who wrote these words? Julius Malema? Zwelinzima Vavi? Judge Ian Farlam?...read more

XENOPHOBIA - BUSINESS MUST ACT

Prof Raymond Parsons
The seriousness with which the political leadership across the board is now taking the worrying outbreak of xenophobia in SA is welcome. There needs to be decisive and principled action to deal with the problem from all key stakeholders in the economy, bearing in mind that it occurred previously in 2008...read more

Buck stops here and not with the dollar

Prof Raymond Parsons

A period of self-flagellation inevitably lies ahead for the South African economy, which is not in a good space, thanks to the twin fiscal and trade deficits, energy insecurity, labour conflict, policy uncertainty, weak investor confidence and the strong dollar, among other things.

Red lights have been flashing for a while, but there seems to be a whiff of panic in the air. These challenges need to be urgently addressed, but cool heads and steady hands are required to turn the situation around...read more

A banker who can see the big picture

Prof Raymond Parsons

COAL mines in the past employed canaries as sentinels that alerted miners to the presence of poisonous gases. Being more sensitive to gas than humans, the birds got distressed before the gases reached levels dangerous to humans, giving the miners time to evacuate the mine.

When at the top of their game, central banks in general (and the South African Reserve Bank in particular) are the early warning system in monetary policy. Of course, this means they are often the unpopular messengers bringing word of unfolding economic and financial risks...read more

Daylight saving may be key to security of power supply

Prof Raymond Parsons

IT IS often said that South Africa should be more prepared to "think outside the box" in tackling some of its challenges. Energy conservation is clearly one of them and already a range of innovative measures are available to save energy.

Yet, with Eskom again facing an emergency in power supply, and having to impose cuts on energy-intensive sectors of the economy for a while, it is a struggle to keep the lights on. Eskom’s TV and radio warnings remind us almost daily how vulnerable the situation remains. For the foreseeable future, electricity supply in South Africa will stay within a tight margin, even though the economy is growing only at about 2% at present...read more

Kleinsake: Mentors het gróót voordele

Prof Tommy du Plessis

Daar is een ding wat die eienaar van ’n kleinsakeonderneming maar alte goed besef – hy het meestal nie al die wysheid om die onderneming 100% reg te bestuur nie.

Foute word gemaak en probleme word soms net so gelaat. Daar is deurlopend uitdagings, soos om die beste bemarkingstegniek vir jou onderneming te identifiseer, jou tyd so doeltreffend moontlik aan te wend en tegnologie ten volle te benut...lees meer

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