Can SA survive given the following

[Dave A]

An email doing the rounds at the moment -

In the light of SARS announcing that South Africas 5million taxpayers
must begin to submit their tax returns
for the support of this nation of 45 million people….


CAN South Africa SURVIVE GIVEN THE FOLLOWING?

The folks who are getting free stuff, don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.

The folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop, and the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!

Now... The people who are forcing the people to pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff, that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff, are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.

So... The people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff, and giving them the free stuff in the first place.

We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.

Now understand this: all great democracies have committed financial suicidesomewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them. Thomas Jefferson said it best: “Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not”.

The number of people now getting free stuff out numbers the people paying for the free stuff.


ELECTION 2013 IS COMING...

A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves!

Only 86% will send this on; it should be 100%. What do u think u should do ?????????

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." -
Margaret Thatcher

[adrianh]

The most importand free stuff should be sterilization...

[Blurock]

The most importand free stuff should be sterilization...

I can not agree more. There is no such thing as global warming. The problem is caused by global breeding. We are disturbing the forces of nature which always work towards equilibrium. Humans are disturbing this balance.

[adrianh]

If each and every person in this country got a job, house, car and cash tomorrow then nine months later there would be 10 times the population.

[murdock]

earth can do without humans...but the humans cannot do without earth...saw this on a movie the other night...but it rings in my head as i watch humans destroy the one thing that keeping us alive...

when we talk about a virus...the only real virus on earth is the human...it consumes...kills and destroys anything in it path...and the worse part...there is no cure.

[Blurock]

If each and every person in this country got a job, house, car and cash tomorrow then nine months later there would be 10 times the population.

Nope. Roads will be congested. The workers get home too late. Then sit in front of the TV. No time for sex...

[Petrichor]

Problem is it is only the people giving the free stuff that complains about this and probably understands the consequences

[Pap_sak]

I have no problem with the disability grant ( as long as its deserved) nether do I have problem with the small pension. I do have a problem with the grant for kids as I feel this money doesn't actually reach the kids and even though tiny, is a weird incentive to actually have kids. I would prefer schools to offer free uniforms,stationary and one proper,hot meal a day and supervised after school care.

[vieome]

In the light of SARS announcing that South Africas 5million taxpayers
must begin to submit their tax returns
for the support of this nation of 45 million people….

Just to throw a spanner at the works, is the above statement true? So often we believe things because we want them to be true.

Lets assume that half a million are self employed non tax payers, that another half a drug lords , and another half crime barrens.

http://mindhacks
This pattern is so common that psychologists have called it the fundamental attribution error. And there’s a whole branch of psychology that investigates how we reason about causes for things called attribution theory. The fundamental attribution error is a good example of a quirk in the way we reason about causes, but it isn’t the only one. Despite the name, it may not even be the most fundamental.

Seeking causes

Psychologists are interested in attribution of causation because it tells us important things about how the mind works. To illustrate this, imagine you see a man asleep under a tree, and a leaf fluttering down to land on his head. As the leaf touches his head he wakes up and shouts “Yikes”. Anyone watching this scene would assume the man woke up because of the falling leaf.

But this simple statement is remarkably difficult to prove – you have no direct access to the cause, just the before (a leaf) and after (“Yikes”). We automatically assume the cause. We talk about it like it is a thing – somehow in the middle between the leaf and the man, but really it is just an assumption, not a thing. And indeed, some new information could come along and force us to reconsider our assumptions. We might find out later that a philosophically-minded ant had come along and, just at that minute, decided to bite the sleeping man’s hand.

So our causes are assumptions, based on what we perceive but with an extra bit of imagination. They are necessary assumptions. Without looking for causes we would be stuck with a confusing picture of the world.

[Mike C]

And indeed, some new information could come along and force us to reconsider our assumptions.

But until that new information comes along, would it not be simply foolish (unscientific even) to reject the original observation and conclusion?

[rosa bester]

i totally agree the grant for kids is going striaght to the bottle stores or drug dealers, and because its so easy to get grant for kids they make more and more kids knowing the tax payers will pay i hate it when people using other institutions for money for their bad habits and on the end or the day the children is suffering for their parents habits

[vieome]

Allow me to challenge your assumption with the following info.

Understanding the freeloaders
In the community of people dedicated to analyzing poverty, one of the sharpest debates is over why some poor people act in ways that ensure their continued indigence. Compared with the middle class or the wealthy, the poor are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, to have children while in their teens, to abuse drugs, to commit crimes, to not save when extra money comes their way, to not work. To an economist, this is irrational behavior. Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn't apply to the poor. When we're poor, Karelis argues, our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation, and we see the world around us not in terms of goods to be consumed but as problems to be alleviated. This is where the bee stings come in: A person with one bee sting is highly motivated to get it treated. But a person with multiple bee stings does not have much incentive to get one sting treated, because the others will still throb. The more of a painful or undesirable thing one has (i.e. the poorer one is) the less likely one is to do anything about any one problem. Poverty is less a matter of having few goods than having lots of problems.

Poverty and wealth, by this logic, don't just fall along a continuum the way hot and cold or short and tall do. They are instead fundamentally different experiences, each working on the human psyche in its own way. At some point between the two, people stop thinking in terms of goods and start thinking in terms of problems, and that shift has enormous consequences. Perhaps because economists, by and large, are well-off, he suggests, they've failed to see the shift at all.

When one looks at takers and the givers would it be fair to make the assumption that the majority of givers are white, and the majority of takers are black? So if a giver A has a business that employs 100 people is affected by a given taking policy e.g BBE, the giver A then takes offence and cuts down his work force to 50 people creating 50 new takers. My point is we are all in this together, the minute we segregate between givers and takers, without understanding what it means to be a taker, we only increase our problems in the country.

One Edit 4:14 change on givers to takers

[adrianh]

@vieome - I really like the way you think.

[Dave A]

That discussion on poverty reminded me of this quote:

Being broke is a temporary situation. Being poor is a state of mind. ~ Mike Todd.

The difficulty I see is social grants do help alleviate the plight of people in dire need. It's a solution, but is it the best solution? It's a salve for the symptoms, but does it help cure the disease at the root of it all - the poverty mindset? If anything, evidence suggests it aggravates it

Tougher still, this was a view I'd formed some years ago, but I believe we've got a bigger problem looming that will make the "poverty mindset problem" obsolete.

The solution to the poverty mindset is to nurture a sense of self-worth and achievement. This isn't the contrived facade of entitlement (rights), but that deeply satisfying sense that you have worked for, earned and deserve what you have (as little as that may happen to be).

But what do you do if there simply aren't enough opportunities out there anymore to ensure that everyone can contribute to society and "earn their way"?

Technology is wiping away jobs at an enormous rate. It's hard to think of an enterprise out there that isn't producing more while using less people.

If the boss had to send a letter out to a client or supplier on the company letterhead, he (and much more likely it was "he" back then) would have to get a typist to type it up for him. Then someone would have to get the letter to the post office. Lot's of people later it would be delivered to the recipient, who would also need a typist to respond.

Now the boss types it him or herself and emails it. How many jobs gone forever just in word processor and email technology?

The architect had to employ teams of draughtsman to draw up plans for big buildings. Nowadays it's the architect on his own and CAD. All the draughtsmen are gone, along with the payroll department, the tea girl, the receptionist, the secretaries, the bean counter... One old time architect I came across not too long ago said he used to employ two hundred people. Nowadays it's him on his own, and he's producing more than he did back then too.

The incentive to work has to be in place. But how the heck do you make sure there's enough work positions available in a world that is able to increase output while rapidly reducing the number of people they need to achieve that growth?

Maybe the poverty trap is no longer the problem. Are we running headlong into an efficiency trap?

[vieome]

@DaveA, very interesting points.
I remember in the past when Companies started automating, like the Car industry there was serious complaints about what it would do to jobs, but technology has sneaked into every aspect of our lives and we do did not see something like that coming. Ted Kaczynski the uni-bomber put forward a similiar argument. And Kevin Kelly editor of wired in his book what technology wants put forward a similiar argument infact going on to say that Ted Kaczynski was right. Perhaps it is time for people to cut the amount of hours we work, job share, enjoy the free time.