Job creation

HERE is a really interesting blog entry on job creation in South Africa from Johanna, an ODI fellow based in Pretoria.

Below is a snipit that captures the extent of job creation quite well:

At petrol stations a guy will put petrol in my car and wash my windows while I wait in the car. In supermarkets, a lady packs my bags for me while someone else is keen to carry them back to my car, which is “watched” by at least one guard. When I go to get my hair cut, my hair dresser has an assistant who gives her the foil and another lady who will wash my hair. At work, we have cleaning ladies who do our dishes and extra staff to empty the bins and wipe the desks (again, different people!). There are guys who come to water the plants and they are supervised by yet other employees.

(My plants tend to just die - perhaps I shouldn't water them with the dregs of my tea... Or maybe I need a professional plant-waterer....)

Me and my net curtains

A little while ago I bought some net curtains (rock and roll!). I bought them from someone who works in the ministry who also sells things (a bit of import-export on the side, you might say). Lots of people do it. It helps to top up salaries (low, a reflection of productivity?) and I think it is a good thing.

- I asked how much.
- R300. S/he showed me the price written on the packet.

I looked how much I had in my wallet. Only R200.

- Oh no s/he said, R200 is fine for cash.

I asked why and it turns out that the R300 is for people who buy on credit. I didn't ask how long people pay over, but that is an interest rate of 50% if you take R200 as the price, and 100% if the price could have been as low as R150 as I suspect. If I guess that is paid over just a few months, then the interest rate becomes a few hundred percent over the whole year.

I've got nothing against that -- I love THIS UK company which charges several thousand percent interest APR for small short-term loans (see HERE). I think that small time money lenders in the developing world are a good thing; they help to tide families over when they need it most, offer a quick and convenient service and the transaction costs are low.

In a large furniture store, two prices are given depending upon whether you pay cash or purchase over a period of several years -- the long term purchase is the headline price and the framing is a reduction if you pay cash. That means that the interest rate is not given.

Below is an example. (Furniture is amazingly expensive in South Africa, even for cash.)



So you pay R1,700 for cash (that’s about $210 at the current exchange rate). If you pay monthly you make 24 monthly payments of R157 and pay an additional R170 deposit. That is a total of R3,938 over 2 years! (But don’t worry – it includes all costs!)

Friday links

See all Friday Links.

1/ A Relationship Venn (via Chart Porn)

2/ Anti-trade policy from Hovis

3/ Malawi’s food production miracle

4/ Free will probably doesn’t exist

5/ Support for a Tobin Tax in the City

6/ Half of UK companies to freeze wages

7/ Why academic economists aren’t Bayesians

8/ Lesotho’s ARV programme is an excellent example

9/ A data set on international technology adoption

10/ A visual representation of the decline of empires

Why did I pay someone to get my car tax for me?

The answer is probably because I am stupid. That is if it is stupid to care about someone more than they care about you. In this case, that someone is the Government of Lesotho.

The Government makes it difficult for me to pay my car tax. Occasionally I have heard that it is easy, but most stories suggest it takes at least half a day of queuing. Thankfully, there are people who you can pay to do this for you.

I didn't want to take half a day of work to do this. I am pretty busy at the moment and didn't want to let down the Govt. So I paid someone to do it for me. Unfortunately, it seems that this is unrequited. I say that because the Govt, when taken as a unit, does not seem to care about making life easy for me to pay my car tax. Why should I care about it when it doesn't care about me?

There are several interesting expansions:

1/ Lesotho is a democratic country. If the Govt as a whole represents the will of the people, then the choice has been taken to ensure admin is very difficult (and presumably get lots of nice paper records in exchange which is very useful). And I am working for the very people who choose that that admin be difficult. The flip side of this choice should not really be that I pay someone to do the admin for me but that I work less and take time off work to do it (as most people have to).

2/ What if special interest groups are keeping this bureaucracy and it does not represent the will of the people? That is a problem. We need to find a way to stop this. And it is true to some extent. Sometimes people like make sure things pass through them to prevent people from doing things without their knowing (lack of trust?).

3/ But no one seems to care much about inefficiencies. I am currently sat in a meeting in which (at the start) around 15 people were jointly writing one document rather slowly. It would be funny if that hadn't taken up (so far) around 45 person hours. It could probably have been done very differently and taken up no more than maybe 10 person hours. Lesotho has lost the productivity of one week of work of a highly qualified person this afternoon - that means less to consume for everyone and more poverty as a result.

3/ Should civil servants get free car tax? If they take an afternoon off work to get it done and if the revenue to Govt from the tax is less than their work would have been worth, is it not worth thinking about?

4/ How about getting rid of car tax? Add on extra tax to petrol instead. Easier to collect, more efficient, less bureaucracy and fairer - those who use the roads most, pay most.

When you don't produce your own human rights

So one day you are consuming lots of nice things. Some of them you might call necessities - like health care. The only problem is, you are not producing any of these nice things yourself. Not only are not producing any of them - you are not making anything anyone else wants to swap for all the nice things you are consuming.

What does that mean? It means you are consuming things other people are giving to you. Otherwise put, you are consuming the product of other people's hard work. You really want these things. You might even feel that you have a right to them - like health. But you are still not producing any of these things you feel you have a right to yourself.

Then suddenly, you are told you can no longer have these things. Other people will no longer work for you. It's tough but you've gotta cut back a bit.

This is exactly what is happening in Lesotho at the moment. Lesotho is given a lot of money by South Africa through the regional customs union, SACU. The money is then used to purchase products - some of them necessities - many of which are imported from South Africa. That might include sending patients to South Africa for treatment, or giving a road building contract to a South African firm. These are examples of South Africans working for us. We pay them with their own money, not money resulting from things we've made and sold to them. That means that, taken as a group, South Africans have been working for free. Very kind.

Now, suddenly, due to the economic situation, we get far few resources from SACU. So we can afford to buy far fewer things from South Africans. So South Africans are working less, for themselves and for other people (us lot in Lesotho). After all, one of the main things a recession is, is people producing fewer things - taking more leisure and consuming less. And that's exactly what is happening.

Unfortunately, in Lesotho, we don't have much choice -- we're consuming things that other people make, and we're consuming their effort and efficiency but giving nothing in return. If they take more leisure, we consume less. Unless, that is, we are able to work more to make up the gap. It's gonna be tough but some of those human rights and necessities we get given might have to go unless we here have enough respect for ourselves to produce all those human rights for ourselves.

Is it the recession?

Recent balance of car crime in Joburg amongst people I know: 2 thefts, 3 attempted thefts, 1 attempted carjacking. All in the last couple of months. All cars with Lesotho licence plates. Previously there have been no problems at all. Are car thefts increasing or are they going for easier targets?

I ran a 10k run in Soweto last weekend*. Our group had 5 cars, of which 4 had Lesotho licence plates. One of them got stolen and two (including mine) got broken into and the ignitions broken in an attempt to steal them**.

When I parked, I made a joke about how I would park next to a nicer car than mine – that way mine would be safe. Only the nice car I parked next to had GP licence plates (Gauteng Province, Johannesburg/Pretoria region) so it didn’t get touched.

Car thieves around Johannesburg target cars registered abroad because it is easier to ‘disappear’ them.

The security. The folk at the MTN Expo Centre, from where the race started and finished, said that they had had no security problems last year, so they halved the security this year. What’s more, they used the security they did have to make sure unregistered runners didn’t run. And this on public streets where people live. Great. Sir, you can’t run on this street where you may or may not live today because you didn’t pay us some money.

Loads of cars got stolen (4 or more from just our section of the car park and more would have been discovered after the marathon runners got back), and even more broken into. It was clearly organized.

At the police station, there was a whole mini-community of people who had just finished the race. Almost all of them had non-GP licence plates. Without it being fun, there was a sort of nice camaraderie between all the ‘victims’ waiting at the police station to report the crimes. I’ve never seen such a degree of unitedness amongst South African of all different races and it felt pretty good. United in victimhood.

Whatever, let’s hope a lesson was learnt for the World Cup next year…

Theft relevant car parts. When I ordered the new ignition for my car, I had to proved certified copies of my passport and the car registration, and also showed the affidavit explaining what happened. Apparently I couldn’t even order a new ignition unit without it. A good effort in preventing car theft. Just as well I reported it else I might be driving a car I have to hot-wire to start for a very long time.

On the positive side. I now know how to hot-wire a car.

* In case you are wondering, I crossed the line after 57:16 minutes. I was told I should take off between 3 and 5 mins because it takes a while to reach the start line and then you are running in and out trying to pass people, so I am giving myself a time of 53 minutes.

** According to the police, it is not attempted theft of a motor vehicle unless the car moves from A to B

A few very funny websites

We have the IMF here on an Article IV mission so I am rather busy at the moment (hence the short blog entries of late).

Here are some of my favourite amusing websites/blogs:

1/ People of Walmart.
2/ Never leave yourself unattended (by a secondary school class-mate of mine who seems to have developed the rather peculiar ability to cause instant insomnia in others).
3/ Awkward family photos.

Any other suggestions?

Should I drink Castle Lite?

I like the new Castle Lite advert; it has Vanilla Ice* in it.

I don’t like Castle Lite but I think I should drink it. That way I would be encouraging good adverts (which make me happy). By the same token, I should also stop purchasing products which have adverts that annoy me.

What do you think?

* Ice, ice baby

An old one

An old facebook note called 'things I saw this morning':

1/ My local Italian restaurant's recycling bin: Homepride oven bakes and pasta sauces!

2/ A local homeless man: Withdrawing money from the cash machine. Poverty ain't what it used to be.

Both witnessed one morning in Bath in July, 2007.

Amusing Road Scenes: a conspiracy of taxi drivers

See all Amusing Road Scenes.

They drove well below the speed limit and it continued like that for about 1.5km.


With thanks to Jon Pycroft who took the photo (I was driving).

Queuing for the sheer pleasure of queuing (?)

I ran a 10k run in Soweto last weekend. At the end there was a very long queue. I asked a guy towards the end what the queue was for. He said he wasn’t sure. Go figure.

(The queue was likely for a free race t-shirt.)

I seem to keep writing on queuing. See here and here. It is a wonderful way to see how much people value time.