LETTER: Mashele is right about skills

Lungile Mashele’s most recent column was insightful (“Order books are full, but skills are scarce”, October 24).

Most other articles bemoan the lack of funds for government to spend. But actually it isn’t a lack of tax revenue that limits spending. Resources are the limiting factor; inflation signals when spending is excessive.

We cannot afford to lose the knowledge, skills, experience and labour that is embodied in those who “have been driven away” by “years of austerity”. It is not finance that is lacking, as Mashele makes clear.

We cannot afford to lose engineers — we can afford to pay them and to build new infrastructure, schools and hospitals. But this is not what the economists tell us, because they are stuck in a balanced budget, austerity paradigm. We must recognise “the fallacy that [only] the private sector creates jobs”.

In addition to Mashele’s list of just how government creates jobs, there is one essential step that we have to take. We also cannot afford to ignore the lives of the families of the 12-million unemployed and the future of their children.

A job guarantee is therefore crucial. It means government offers a job to anyone who is able and willing to work at the minimum wage. It is an enormous undertaking and can only be implemented in stages, but it signals the intent of all of us that we can no longer abide the morally repugnant scale of unemployment in SA.

It does not take taxes to pay the wages. Actually, the tax revenue will increase as the private sector recognises the opportunity created by increased spending. So much more is possible if only we can get beyond the economists’ present way of thinking.

A job guarantee is an investment in our people and their children’s future.

Howard Pearce
Rondebosch

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