whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

Laws / rules governing economic interactions have to consider more than just a present situation. What is different about Microsoft converting their popularity into a monopoly \"rent\" situation from

2.
(Comments)

...lthiest nations in Africa. Did they get poor because of rich Americans or government corruption and failed economic policies? Rich people have no interest in poor people. Rich people make money b...

3.
(Comments)

Walton, it\'s been a while. Here\'s a definition for you from dictionary.com: capitalism is \"an economic system based on private ownership of capital\". None of this \"the concentration of economic

4.
(Comments)

... very broad term, most people who call themselves anti-capitalists are united by one thing: their belief in economic democracy. Our biggest critique of capitalism is that it controls lives without giv...

5.
(Comments)

...s in China) falls within countries that have little respect for individual rights, democracy or free-market economics. It isn\'t free-market capitalism that is the problem. It is the lack of more ...

6.
(Comments)

...iament. Parliament is a management structure for the status quo. The decisions that matter in the world are economic decisions, and these are not controlled by parliament. That\'s why a strike is ...

7.
(Comments)

Walton, economics is an evolving theory. I wouldn\'t go to Wikipedia for a current answer. Most of what I\'m discussing is price theory; in which, should politicians choose to do so, they can price

8.
(Comments)

...lism. Look up capitalism on wikipedia if you don\'t know what it is: \"Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are mostly privately[1] owned and operated ...

9.
(Comments)

...street vendors have a far stronger claim to in my view. Additionally I would like to know more about the economics of either of these practices. I have long suspected (though never proved) that bot...

10.
(Comments)

...ity industry without training and union affiliation. These laws are there to ensure a working social and economic system. The fact that the most impoverished in our society have trouble clearing th...

11. The hazard of market dominance
(Analysis/Analysis)

...lenty of drivers that will lead business executives into temptation. Price fixing is one symptom of a wider economic problem. During the Competition Tribunal investigations into collusion, it is jus...

12. Electricity Redux - Electricity Quotas Will Work About As Well As Race Quotas
(Analysis/Analysis)

...hase additional electricity at whatever price was demanded. Since this period coincided with tremendous US economic growth, electricity was scarce and prices for bulk electricity reached upwards of 5...

13. Funding departments instead of people cheats everyone
(Analysis/Analysis)

...is large number is only 4.6% of the total South African economy. State spending, as a proportion of total economic income, is 34.2%. If anyone has control over the economy and over the services tha...

14. Zimbabwe's winds of change are blowing once more
(Analysis/Analysis)

... the people. Cracks appear to be turning into crevices within the ruling party. Sitting in the doldrums of economic and political shambles, Zimbabweans have surrendered themselves to the fate of the ...

15. Jacob Zuma, Inflation Denialist?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e from our reality in South Africa, consider the following numbers: money-supply growth is 22.2%, but real economic growth is only 4.5%. It should be no surprise that inflation is running at 8.8% as...

16. Higher food prices mean downgrading that Turkey to a Chicken
(Analysis/Analysis)

...anyway. We have come out of a long period of declining food prices. The result is visibly apparent in any economic survey of agriculture. In the developed world agriculture is now only 2 – 3%...

17. Simba the Saviour?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...the University of Lords in the UK, Dr Makoni is a highly educated man, with rich experience in the field of economics and business consulting. His work experience has been spread widely across the Af...

18. Exports and parliamentary laziness
(Analysis/Analysis)

...nt Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka – a guest at the proceedings - that she look to government policy regarding economic policy support to encourage further such large-scale investments. Manufacturing, a...

19. Searching for objective measures of value
(Analysis/Analysis)

...na, India, the Middle East and Turkey." These are all nations that have experienced long periods of economic growth and their citizens are putting their money into traditional sources of valu...

20. Contradictions resolve in ways you don't intend
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t taxpayers' money cannot be created without active and successful businesses. Job creation comes from economic growth, and economic growth comes from the success of businesses. Note, though, t...

21. Killing the Golden Goose, a lesson in Economic Freedom
(Analysis/Analysis)

... wealth of their companies with the "people". Last week the Free Market Foundation released the Economic Freedom of the World report for 2007. "There is a strong correlation between ...

22. Africa, China and Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...erals than you can shake a pointed stick at. After decades of instability, warfare, or plain disregard for economic rights the most capable Africans have fled leaving shattered infrastructure behind....

23. Black Economic Empowerment, like charity, is not investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...tion has unintended consequences and the consequences of government’s continual focus on “Black Economic Empowerment” is becoming clear. One analyst, who chose to remain anonymous, d...

24. Black Diamonds and the trouble with statistics
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ingful and reliable information poor investments can be made. In 2001 South Africa was suffering from weak economic growth.  High interest rates (broaching 25%) were causing business and home-o...

25. Ending poverty means abandoning charity and accepting reality
(Analysis/Analysis)

...tor. This is not to dismiss the question, which is an important one. With the failure of most centralised economic policies and governments in Africa the informal sector is the largest employer and ...

26. Atlas Shrugged at 50
(Analysis/Analysis)

...rently nationalising more businesses. In words that could have been said by Wesley Mouch, Atlas Shrug's Economic Dictator, Zimbabwe's Trade Minister Obert Mpofu has stated, "Once we take ...

27. Everything is coming up Capitalism
(Analysis/Analysis)

...irely discredited. The word, that is, not the ideology. That has re-emerged. Now it is known as "new economics" or "anti-globalisation" or "people's economies". Th...

28. Zimbabwe: recovering the irrecoverable
(Analysis/Analysis)

...h Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland where the rand is also the local currency. These three countries are all, economically, extremely small. Zimbabwe, for all its current travails, is not. Zimbabwe ha...

29. South Africa's two tiers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...a to Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, all seem to recognise that the informal sector is here to stay. Macro-economic policy, the idea that the whole country can be treated as a single entity, isn'...

30. How every day on strike left civil servants permanently worse-off
(Analysis/Analysis)

Striking civil servants have, today, agreed on a wage increase with their boss, the South African Government. The 7.5% was the final offer tabled last week by government and rejected by COSATU, the Co

31. Getting Home in Zimbabwe: The impossibility of public transport
(Analysis/Analysis)

By the time you finish reading this article the cost of a taxi-ride home from work in Harare will have doubled. Zimbabwe, which continues to subsidise fuel prices, has had fuel shortages for the past

32. Start your business in Johannesburg but hire your advisor in Cape Town
(Analysis/Analysis)

...siness development is a crucial part of government's strategy to reduce unemployment and increase black economic empowerment. Whythawk has recently completed rating individual small business devel...

33. When equality becomes unfair: South Africa's two economies
(Analysis/Analysis)

South Africa is a microcosm for all the world's greatest unresolved itches.  Here we have fair-skinned folk living in shiny new cities with first-rate infrastructure and access to all the be

34. Do you hate the poor enough to be charitable?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...rom Nigeria to Papua New Guinea. US discomfort with China says more about US fears of losing their top-dog economic place in the world than of their attitude to Chinese worker's rights. A quick ...

35. Nigeria, or the idiots guide to stealing an election
(Analysis/Analysis)

... the same time Obasanjo began the second phase of his machinations. The government appointed Financial and Economic Crimes Commission declared that they would publish a list of public figures guilty ...

36. One Laptop Per Child, now costing 75% more ...
(Analysis/Analysis)

...p; All of this tells African governments that they need not be responsible for the outcomes of their failed economic and political experiments; the rest of the world will feel sorry for them and stump...

37. Jobs are from Mars, Business is from Venus
(Analysis/Analysis)

...velopment approach in Africa which "puts people at the centre of development and judges the success of economic and social policy according to what happens to people at work ... autonomous and in...

38. Jacob's ANC Ladder: the power of the state, the power of the party
(Analysis/Analysis)

... the power-elite inside the party.  And that power-elite is fragmented between the Mbeki fraternity of economic rationalists and non-interventionists, and the populist fraternity of unions, commu...

39. What market is worth R 100 billion a year and is growing at 10.9%?
(Analysis/Analysis)

Strategies for Businesses reaching out to Informal Markets In 1997, as part of the conditions they agreed upon for getting their cellular licence, Vodacom developed a sophisticated telephone call-cent

40. Cricket, corruption and the match-fixing that leads to murder
(Analysis/Analysis)

...candal and then, conveniently, died without ever naming any high-level accomplices. This column focuses on economic development.  Frequently we point out that, where the underlying framework of ...

41. Racial arguments muddy human rights and the ending of poverty
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e poor in South Africa are also black.  That should not be allowed to mislead and misinform efforts of economic development.  But it has. South Africa’s President, Thabo Mbeki, has on...

42. What happens when they hate you? The impact of charity.
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ows what he got up to.  Scientists are recognised by their peers, not the public. Whenever science or economics have become populist we have seen cheating.  Scientists who release findings ...

43. The best bridge out of poverty is over the future of cash
(Analysis/Analysis)

National prestige is not only measured by the weight of population but also by the economic prosperity and growth that citizens enjoy.  Countries that may be minnows when it comes to absolute num

44. The Cold War, Global Warming and the War on Ideas
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ith their belief in individual expression and the power of the dynamic tension of freedom of expression and economic competition; or the USSR with their belief in state-directed development in which t...

45. A story of an African Orphan
(Analysis/Analysis)

... way to look after the little helpless victims of this deadly serial killer. South Africa is not only the economic powerhouse of Africa it also has one of the highest incidences of HIV (Human Immune...

46. Western Cape economic development support agencies lack the capacity to halve unemployment
(Analysis/Analysis)

Whythawk Ratings (white-hawk), the South African NGO rating firm, has just released their review of the performance of enterprise and small business development consultants in the Western Cape, South

47. We're from Mars and we want to help: four lessons in development
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ed" by price fixing. In other words they are denying developing nations the very reforms that enabled economic growth and development in the most sophisticated countries; and they doom the poore...

48. Coffee, the miracle of poverty, and other wonders
(Analysis/Analysis)

...and these are just as curious.  How does someone in the US – in the middle of one of the longest economic booms we have ever known, when more wealth has been created than ever – remai...

49. South Africa and China, or why democracy isn't connected to economic growth
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ute poverty from 22% (268 million people) to 7% over a period of 20 years.  That is simply astonishing economic development. This was managed without external relief efforts or any heroic interna...

50. Enterprise Development and Employment: Experiences in South Africa and South Eastern Europe
(Analysis/Analysis)

...p into the formal educational system. Most of the job creation initiatives in South Africa are modelled on economically advanced nations, with very limited impact. If more of the experiences of regio...