Job creation

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-10-13-jobs-alone-do-not-create-equality-or-end-poverty-says-thuli-madonsela/

1. She's right that jobs in and of themselves are not the solution, because someone has to create those jobs. It is not sustainable forever to make them all government jobs. As it is, I think we probably have more than enough bureaucrats, speaking as one myself who is due to finish his current role and then be unemployed myself. The point is, those government salaries are paid by the tax income from treasury which obviously comes from citizens paying tax. At some point, the tax income will be too low to pay those salaries. I think we are already at that point.

2. If we want private sector to create jobs we have to have an enabling environment for private sector and entrepreneurship. But red tape and costs of patents, making a new company, setting up a website, etc., are out of the reach of almost all but 10% of this country, which effectively keeps the wealth trapped in the upper layers. To create that enabling environment, company identity, registration, creation, patents and copyrights all need to be FREE to register/create.

3.  Our education needs to be refocused on entrepreneurship after age 15 so that people who drop out of school have a chance. I would want to see life orientation and mathlit as compulsory to matric even for those doing maths, because they teach the skills that you ACTUALLY use as an adult.

4. They talk about basic income grant but that just exaggerates the problem of a top-heavy bureaucracy. If you do not have enough taxpayers to even cover existing government budget, you can't add another ten or twenty billion rands to the budget to give a BIG to every person who is in the unemployed category. (Just my guess as to what it would minimally cost to increase this).

In order to fund such a thing there's no escaping from the fact that you need more taxpayers.

The way to get more taxpayers is 

a. Determine what you want your primary economic sectors to be.  At present it seems to be finance sector carrying about 1/5 of the country.

b. Teach kids at school to fit into that sector and be entrepreneurs.

c. Create an enabling environment: do not obstrcut creativity and entrepreneurship with red tape and taxes and petty fees.

Here's an analysis. It costs about R 30 000 to patent something. I know this because I've tried it. Assume for a moment that you establish a national patent database where people can patent stuff for free. Every year, SA has about 5000 new patents. Let's assume therefore that due to cost, that that 5000 comes from upper-income earners who are about 5 million. Meaning about 1 patent per 1000 people. This means that if you made patents free, you could have South Africa patenting about 45-50 000 patents per year instead of 5. That's a 10x increase. Suppose the income (for lawyers) for those patents are 150 000 000 rands per annum, of which let's assume the lawyers pay 37 500 000 in tax. The government therefore is making 37,5m in tax from patents every year. Instead of that 37,5m in tax, we could instead have 40-50 000 new companies every year being created, each creating perhaps 10-100 jobs, and paying several billions in tax.

red tape fees are short-sighted and privilege the few.