Tag: Free Market Foundation

Banning health insurance options and scrapping the move to introduce affordable medical scheme cover demonstrates a flagrant disregard for individuals' rights to enter into voluntary private contracts to protect themselves from unforeseen out-of-pocket payments when catastrophe strikes.

Government intervention in the economy simply does not work. It is a mystery, then, why so many otherwise intelligent people keep calling for more of the same. After years of low growth (12 years now) concurrent with government fiscal deficits and various stimulus packages, we are now faced with retrenchments across the economy. The latest of which is Massmart announcing that it is considering retrenching 1,400 people.

Speaking in KwaZulu-Natal on New Year’s Day, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said that the National Health Insurance (NHI) will put private and public hospitals on par with each other. Indeed, rather than improving the quality of care on offer in the public sector, it’s more likely that, by effectively nationalising them, the NHI will reduce the quality of care at private facilities. 

The almost simultaneous implosion of socialist and communist systems throughout the world is arguably the single most significant political event of the twentieth century. The year 1989 is particularly poignant because in that year the Berlin Wall was dismantled.  This event signalled the beginning of the end of socialism in Europe and hastened an already growing worldwide disillusionment with socialist ideology.

Promoting his seminal book, South Africa’s war against Capitalism, the economist Professor Walter Williams averred that “The solution to South Africa’s problems is not special programmes, it’s not affirmative action, it’s not handouts, and it’s not welfare. It is freedom. Because if you look around the world and you look for rich people, diverse people who have the ability to get along fairly well, you are also looking at a society where there are relatively large amounts of individual freedom”.

At a time when South Africa’s economy is flatlining and Eskom is failing, Government has proposed an amendment to the Bill of Rights, which will allow it to confiscate people’s homes without compensation.

The trade union federation Cosatu recently called for tax increases, particularly on the wealthy, to arrest South Africa’s economic down spiral. But economist Arthur B Laffer, known for popularising the Laffer curve, shows us that beyond a certain point, tax revenue will decline as tax rates increase.

The SAA and SA Express boards have failed consistently, but there is a solution, one that will end taxpayer bailouts, satisfy politicians’ desire to keep the flag flying and even retain our national pride. But it will take courage and political will.

It is most astonishing that even as the Venezuelan crisis unfolds on TV screens across the world, the orientation of governance in the United States is in danger of degenerating into the same socialist experimentation that has brought such suffering and tragedy to the South American country.

Winning the rugby World Cup has shown what South Africans can do if they put aside differences and work together. What can we do to allow the spirit and courage that the Springboks displayed on the rugby field to spill over into the hearts and minds of all South Africans?