THICK END OF THE WEDGE
PETER BRUCE: BIG solution would change the country
‘What we should be putting firmly back onto the table is BIG, the basic income grant’
Watching the social benefits scandal come and grow, and then, sort of, go has been an education. The contortions Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini has gone through to ensure the contract to distribute grants stayed with Net1/CPS convey not only the near certainty that someone somewhere is being paid off, but that the whole system of paying grants for this and that is itself iniquitous. What we should be putting firmly back onto the table is BIG, the basic income grant. If we can get agreement on a national minimum wage model using advanced economy unemployment levels as a suitable guide, then BIG should be a doddle.The topic has been around for ages. It comes and goes, here in SA as well as in the rest of the world. Many countries already have a form of BIG. But as our population grows and as the government spends more and more money on every job it "creates" and as growth remains stuck in the mud and dreams of reindustrialising SA are just that — dreams — we may have to...
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