whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

...rn the latter has is that formal channels - provided by the state in the form of company registration, tax regulations and a legal system - are not suited to their needs. They\'re too expensive to bot...

2.
(Comments)

...earch from moneys gotten from exactly the same source, the average person. The question is not \\\"taxes vs not taxes\\\" but who gets the taxes and how and what happens to the excess. Even sit...

3.
(Comments)

...ds\\\" who dictate the nature of much of their working environment and ultimately levy significant \\\"taxes\\\". This results in the majority of the realtive wealth generated ending up in the hands o...

4.
(Comments)

...dget airline is a good analogy, as I know there are other factors involved such as cross-subsidy with tax-payers\' money. So the current \'competitiveness\' is not self-sustainable....

5.
(Comments)

...n the top-down approach where millions are spent trying to reach people who couldn\'t care less if the taxi-driver they are commuting to work with drives recklessly as long as they make it through rus...

6. Trade Liberalisation isn't only between Rich and Poor
(Analysis/Analysis)

... contributor to the world's food shortage. Plus, all the other American industries have to pay higher taxes in order to subsidise American farmers. The US is not alone in this; the EU's Common Agric...

7. Mozambique's Lessons for South Africa
(Analysis/Analysis)

...-west, to Ilha de Mozambique, directly east. However, the 300 km journey to Cuamba takes 10 hours and taxis only leave when they're full, if at all. The train between Nampula and Cuamba takes 24...

8. The Remarkable Power of Remarkable People
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ne can afford to pay for them. So governments have introduced a system of charges known as regressive taxation. This means that the wealthiest are charged more, and the poorest are charged less. Th...

9. Everything gets tested but political ideas, they become policy
(Analysis/Analysis)

...individual consumer choice. Untested political ideas ... become policy. The first time that grateful taxpayers get to react to some peculiar idea dreamt up by an errant politician, is when it gets f...

10. No way out; ducking the Eskom bullet
(Analysis/Analysis)

...elves in advance. Not so with Eskom or any other state-owned enterprise. The shareholder here is the taxpayer. Government must pay money derived from the earnings of South Africans to cover the cos...

11. Taxing the Future, Confusing the Present
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s a plea, not only to the new Zuma / Motlanthe alliance within the ANC, but also to South Africa's taxpayers. Behind the glib remarks he was begging taxpayers, "Please keep paying." Th...

12. Netscape, the Internet and Creative Destruction
(Analysis/Analysis)

...power of individual investment. The best they can offer is collective blame shedding and the waste of taxpayers' money on populist causes. As Jacob Zuma said in Davos, "I’m not certai...

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

...4.2% will require that the state spend less money elsewhere, decreasing services to the poor, or raise taxes, making business a less efficient job-creator. It's going to be hard to get people to ...

14. Of Chiefs and Presidents
(Analysis/Analysis)

...m businessman and music mogul, Sean Combs, for $25,000 per month. At least the people know where their taxes will be going. The list of African leaders who hang onto power is endless. Even those deem...

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

...frica) the majority of the 2,000 private schools charge less than R 8,000 per year. In return for our tax, only 15.1% of matriculants at public schools gained a university pass in 2007, in comparison...

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

...f they use their products for biofuels will have the perverse result of increasing food prices. Using tax-payers' money to inflate prices is hardly sound economic policy. Government, as far as b...

17. Of Capitalism, Socialist Greed, Poverty and Remaining Silent
(Analysis/Analysis)

...r-productive – where they can. This is sad, as it makes for very one-sided debates. All wages, taxes, public expenditure – the "developmental state" – derives from the pr...

18. Trevor Manuel and the "Plunder of Skills"
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ay that pocket calculators are products. Pocket calculators can travel the world easily and, short of taxation at the border, are free to arrive and go as they please. People are not. When people c...

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

... are being selfish and refusing to create them, goes the argument. Pointless jobs can be created with taxpayers' money but taxpayers' money cannot be created without active and successful bus...

20. 100 Days of Sodom
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e model and invite the world to invest? Creating unnecessary jobs at the expense of the small pool of taxpayers seems an unlikely way to create long-term sustainable development. ...

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

...y in the world. South Africa falls down in terms of the level of government ownership of the economy, tax levels, and the low level at which the top marginal tax rate kicks in. Our inflation rate, e...

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

...mail). Anything considered even slightly strategic is not for sale. The government may have confused taxation with investment. Government has made so much money off formal-sector privately-employed...

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

...partments.  Businesses have calculated the cost of empowerment to their businesses; consider it a tax, and pass on the costs to their customers. Charity has very specific associations:  that...

24. Black Swans, Cost Overruns and Industrial Tariffs
(Analysis/Analysis)

...fs imposed by developing nations. Consider this: South Africa imposes massive import tariffs – taxes – on industrial and manufactured goods that are imported. The main reason cited for ...

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

...ights and the welfare state are a relatively recent development. And you can't have these without taxes. And taxes don't exist without businesses and incomes to tax. And those incomes and b...

26. Atlas Shrugged at 50
(Analysis/Analysis)

... In order to raise the capital necessary to support De Beers, government will have to raise additional taxes from other businesses. Government's "need" to create jobs will see millions ...

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

... creating possibly the most business-friendly, liberal economy in Africa. It would almost have to be a tax-free haven with a minimal state. Many may argue that this will not address the poverty of t...

28. Science gone wrong: when self-delusion leads to death
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e drab. The choice is yours. No-one is holding a gun to your head. Except the government when they tax the companies who sell the things you no longer want. ...

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

...s. The US has long been in the top-right quadrant. However, protectionist measures, bad policies and tax-breaks to specific industries has resulted in a concentration of wealth and power and the US ...

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

...sector while doing absolutely nothing to aid it and plenty to discourage it. In 2006 SARS announced a tax amnesty for businesses signing up to the formal economy. In October 2006 SARS Commissioner, ...

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

...ng subject to the authority of the state is too great then they opt out. They can do so by going into tax exile, or hunkering down behind a mountain of weapons in isolated huts hidden in the wilderne...

32. 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

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

...hing in a restaurant is carefully worked out. The food will be 15% of the bill, rent 10%, labour 10%, taxes, utilities, wastage, cleaning ... everything carefully done. These relationships can't...

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

...y.  Raise minimum wage and the cost gets passed onto consumers through higher prices.  Raise taxes, increase legislative overhead, you name it, prices go up. This increases the cost of local...

35. Melamine, China, and the peril for emerging markets
(Analysis/Analysis)

...rmers in the US.  The very products that would most assist the development of poor nations.  Tax-payers in the rich world prefer to keep poor nations in permanent need of charity and aid (so...

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

... R 30 billion annually, that repackage branded goods into volume sizes most affordable to the poor The taxi industry is a vast and under-appreciated network of business owners worth R 21 billion a yea...

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

...s were preoccupied by the distribution of wealth, not its creation.  Strikes were as crippling as taxes.  Industrial jobs were going to lower-cost countries and academic brains to America.&r...

38. The redistribution of poverty
(Analysis/Analysis)

... to spend money importing food they used to produce themselves.  That money will come from higher taxes which further degrades the productive capacity of their economy. This is usually a politic...

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

...te the equivalent of 159 000 annual jobs; and an additional R7.2 billion will be paid to Government in taxes. Since then the cost has ballooned to R 410 billion. And that was before the stadium tende...

40. The Martians Really Care: four points to govern development
(Analysis/Ideas and Challenges)

...nimal benefits.  We must insist that they adopt our work practices, plus, we think that an excise tax on cheap imports would be a good idea.” Perhaps they too have a vibrant development se...

41. Should charitable organisations be allowed to compete with businesses?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...reenpeace).  Should these organisations continue to be treated as non-profits, and not subject to taxation, if part of their operations generate profits? It is a difficult question.  The or...

42. Is the ownership of property at odds with the needs of the poor?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...Property is theft.” "The peasant who hires land, the manufacturer who borrows capital, the tax-payer who pays tolls, duties, patent and license fees, personal and property taxes, &c., ...

43. Rating Copyright and Terms of Use
(FAQs/Rating FAQs)

...t on the adequacy of market price, the suitability of any organisation for a particular client, or the tax exempt nature or taxability of payments made in respect to any organisation. Whythawk receive...

44. No matter how hard you try bad environments lead to bad results
(Analysis/Analysis)

((George W Bush)) has been mighty surprised by the tenacity and persistence of the instability and violence in ((Iraq)).  Since 1958 Iraqis have been ruled by a series of tyrants culminating in t

45. Does Africa need the most expensive school in the world?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...he government of South Africa". I'm pleased that it won't be a burden on the South Africa taxpayer and that this money will come out of the trust that ((Oprah Winfrey)) is setting up but,...

46. Senescence, the death of development
(Analysis/Analysis)

...for minimal benefits. We must insist that they adopt our work practices, plus, we think that an excise tax on cheap imports would be a good idea.” Perhaps they too have a vibrant development sec...

47. Vouchers and Individual Choice
(Analysis/Analysis)

...my spending may take on biblical proportions. Public schools are a public good where politicians spend taxpayers’ money on other people’s children. Schools, frequently, don’t achieve...

48. 1 Why are development ratings necessary?
(FAQs/Rating FAQs)

...ck. Many of the funding organisations battle to give away sufficient money each year to maintain their tax-exempt status. Every time a significant social problem receives publicity thousands of people...

49. Terms of Use
(Static Content)

...t on the adequacy of market price, the suitability of any organisation for a particular client, or the taxexempt nature or taxability of payments made in respect to any organisation. Whythawk receives...

50. Section 51 Manual for Whythawk Development CC
(Static Content)

...rc.org.za Records available in terms of any other legislation Close Corporations Act 69 of 1984 Income Tax Act 95 of 1967 Skills Development Levies Act No. 9 of 1999 Unemployment Contributions Act No....