whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

Speaking in terms of individual freedom and a globalized economy, migration for work is actually helpful, since it matches talent and needs. But brain drain is a major cause of lack of progress in dev

2.
(Comments)

...iven that 40% of South Africans earn their living in this sector (even though it only makes up 6.5% of the economy) it could be an interesting idea....

3.
(Comments)

...he formal sector\'s fault. Thabo Mbeki, in South Africa, happily speaks about the \"first\" and \"second\" economy, and the need to address the concerns of both. The only concern the latter has is tha...

4.
(Comments)

...ormality. However, I question your conclusion that \"No government should ever get rid of its informal economy, even if it were possible.It is a wonderful tool for understanding the true desires o...

5.
(Comments)

... That is quite an astonishing number. The reason the dollar is losing its importance, the reason the US economy is looking less dominant is NOT because Americans have gotten poorer, but because of ...

6.
(Comments)

Fuck sakes, Gavin, let\'s not haggle over semantics. You know as well as I do that the world economy is ovcerwhelmingly controlled by a very small minority of it\'s people. This is the problem. If

7.
(Comments)

... power and wealth is held by a small number of individuals and families; Russia 3) Big-firm - most of the economy exists in a few large corporations; South Africa 4) Entrepreneurial - most of the ec...

8.
(Comments)

...nd street vendors are subject to similar structures of \\\"ownership\\\" to those that exist in the formal economy. By this I mean that they are ruled over by \\\"landlords\\\" who dictate the nature ...

9.
(Comments)

...lapping, and occasionally blurred, economies in South Africa. There is plenty of wealth in the informal economy - which is why it exists. All the laws that you mention are expensive and the very b...

10.
(Comments)

You \"advise investors and companies on understanding the informal economy\" and yet you publish this nonsense? First, hawkers and car guards are very different. Try not to confuse them. Hawkers ru

11. Overcoming the Conservation of Energy
(Analysis/Analysis)

...continued functioning of the train network. If it stops working so will London. The same is true for any economy. A sophisticated and invisible network of connections make the seemingly miraculous ...

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

...he larger these deviations can be, and the greater the impact on price inflation. Effective control of the economy is in very few hands. The South African government comprises over 34% of the economy...

13. Of Chiefs and Presidents
(Analysis/Analysis)

...leading the SADC on politics. Twenty-eight years on, the man has become his people's worst enemy. The economy is virtually non-existent and poverty levels are high. 1990 saw his best friend Edga...

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

...Clinic, is worth about R 63 billion a year. Yet this 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...

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

...nuing trauma for a population starved of good times. New ideas are needed to bring investors back into the economy and the current regime is only interested in preventing future judgement of their pas...

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

...ion of "too much" of your own money is now a crime. Welcome to the world's fastest shrinking economy where the currency degrades in value faster than it takes to type down all the zeros;...

17. The Speculator: Pricing in the Future
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ng both jobs and investment. The flight is towards the services sector which now makes up some 68% of our economy. "The reason for the growth in services is that South Africa's economy is m...

18. Simba the Saviour?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...of Minister of Finance in 2000. This was an appointment which, to many, was to be the turning point for an economy on the brink of collapse. He came in with a lot of zeal and beaming with confidence. ...

19. Podcast: The US dollar's decline effects aid and trade in Africa
(Podcasts/Emerging Market Risk)

...e US dollar declined by 30% during 2007. This has an effect both on the real value of aid and on the world economy. Download the podcast: The US dollar in Africa. This was originally presented at Fro...

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

... Bretton Woods, the war-time allies agreed on an international gold standard to stabilise the world's economy. It was complex. Gold was fixed at $35 / ounce and all other currencies were pegged ...

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

...t give up. Since 2001 official unemployment has hovered between 25 – 26%. Over the same period the economy has become 27% larger. Much of the ANC succession debate has been over this seeming ...

22. The Miracle of Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...g to their own profit. To the parliamentarians who feel it is their right to regulate business out of the economy, perhaps you should visit an old man making his first chairs and tell him that the in...

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

...forts to liberalise and improve their investment environment. They are the 22nd most economically liberal economy in the world. South Africa falls down in terms of the level of government ownership ...

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

...o Africa. The continent with 14% of the world's population and 23% of its land is worth only 2% of its economy. The entire value of African companies as US$ 800 billion of which US$ 600 billion a...

25. The spectre of loyalty over ability
(Analysis/Analysis)

... ability; craven sycophancy over talent and innovation. The result is lost opportunities and a diminished economy. The most important thing that every person has by birth is their capacity for work ...

26. Investment cannot happen if the market isn't private
(Analysis/Analysis)

...titor. Having sold off Iskor they want to have another go. The state is sending out the message that the economy is far too important to leave to private initiative. And all of this is being justif...

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

... 27 million people live in South Africa’s informal sector; they spend R 100 billion a year and their economy is growing at 10.9%.  This is bigger and faster than virtually every other Afric...

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

...t until others pointed out inconsistencies that the methodology was reviewed and corrected. Turned out the economy was doing much better than they claimed.  The high interest rates we experienc...

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

...they derive from that state then a central government is stable. When the state starts intervening in the economy and property rights are under threat then investors and business owners withdraw thei...

30. Atlas Shrugged at 50
(Analysis/Analysis)

...tain all the staff and bring in a manager. All we do is get rid of the owner." Zimbabwe's empty economy is a worthy demonstration of the world left behind once all the John Galt's leave...

31. Zimbabwe: the Hollow State
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ration Murambatsvina shut down most of the informal sector, left 700 000 homeless and secured the Zimbabwe economy for the Chinese 3.5 million of Zimbabwe's most educated and productive citizen...

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

...ower and wealth is held by a small number of individuals and families; Russia 3) Big-firm - most of the economy exists in a few large corporations; South Africa 4) Entrepreneurial - most of the...

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

...roducts are unavailable, and the only real trade takes place in the informal market – now 80% of the economy. The measure of failed states By every measure of the term, Zimbabwe is a failed st...

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

...-neck with Brazil for the title of the country with the highest measure of inequality. Since then, as the economy has grown, the gap between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% has gotten much wider....

35. The war of informal markets against central states; a bellwether of support
(Analysis/Analysis)

... Zimbabwe, for all the posturing by Robert Mugabe - their increasingly detached tyrant - is a fairly open economy. Their people are used to processed goods imported from outside the country and Zimb...

36. 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

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

...ity prevent it. A business setting up in South Africa has a choice: to place it in the wealthy part of the economy, or in the impoverished part.  The business rules in both are the same, but the ...

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

...outh Africa the barriers to entering the formal market have become so high that the informal / extra-legal economy is now growing faster than the legal one. The same is happening all over the world. ...

39. Sarkozy's French Election: when elephants fight only the grass gets trampled
(Analysis/Analysis)

...cratic dictatorship.  China has become a major, but self-involved, world player.  Europe’s economy is sickly but significant.  The US has alienated all of these other elephants. T...

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

...latest communication technologies with the aspirations of 20 million South Africans living in the informal economy? What do we have to do to unlock the awesome market on our doorstep? Unlocking the ...

41. Leveraging your good name; the power of a positive credit rating
(Analysis/Analysis)

...nbsp; If it is clear that you won’t default then they can reduce the price accordingly. In a modern economy, filled with third-party rating services, you are able to build up a good name as an ...

42. The US$ 5 trillion market at the bottom of the pyramid
(Analysis/Analysis)

...unrest and outrage – the poor will become so agitated that the rich are targeted.  The informal economy is essentially a local monopoly; inefficient and abusive of an asymmetry of informati...

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

... focuses on economic development.  Frequently we point out that, where the underlying framework of an economy is wrong, you cannot get economic growth, job creation and prosperity.  Cricket ...

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

...l decide for themselves. It is self-serving to speak of a “formal” and “informal” economy.  There is only the economy.  That government thinks that certain businesse...

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

...een and associated with that glamour.  They should know better. Development, like a properly managed economy, is run by people who do not seek the adoration of the general public.  Much of ...

46. The redistribution of poverty
(Analysis/Analysis)

...nny nose, sore muscles and a cough are indications of a viral infection, so poverty is an indication of an economy that is ill. Your flu could be caused by a variety of reasons:  you may have ca...

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

...elatively small on their part - will act as a colossal dumping of goods and services, distorting the local economy and putting local organisations out of business. Development is the responsibility o...

48. World Cup 2010 asks for big sacrifices from the poor
(Analysis/Analysis)

...; how much is too much? Numerous studies have been conducted looking at the value of the World Cup to our economy.  A Pretoria University study puts it at R 5 billion, 0.28% to GDP and the creat...

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

... of concern regarding South Africa's skills deficit:  "The risks facing Africa's largest economy in 2007 remain skewed to the downside due to a number of structural imbalances and so...

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

...ther unofficial broader measurements place the unemployment rate closer to 40%. It appears that the formal economy is not growing fast enough to absorb the masses of unemployed individuals. The most ...