My favourite financial publication for the last 10 years has been Barrons.  It is a highly regarded financial newspaper that comes out every Saturday in America which I have read on my Kindle for years.  They boast that their readership has more millionaires and more CEO’s than any other financial newspaper and I would imagine that is true because it is on a far more serious and technical level than for example local magazines like the Financial Mail which would be a far simpler read than Barrons. 

Barrons recently had an article that was quite sceptical about South Africa’s future, but the part that interests me is that they said a number of things that needed to change in South Africa, if South Africa is to succeed economically.  The one thing was, and I don’t see the ANC getting rid of this, was removing black economic empowerment saying that that is stopping the economy developing as much as it could.  The other thing, and they indicated that the ANC would not like to change this either, is something that I have written about extensively and they said the labour laws in South Africa simply have to change before South Africa can succeed economically. 

I am not going to give my whole normal speech on that, but it was just nice to read that that was the opinion of the leading economic analysts they spoke to saying on the one hand, while it gives protection to those who already have jobs, it makes the economy so much worse and what people forget, those who have jobs anyway, is that when we are talking about a worsening economy we are talking about more unemployed people – we are  talking about the person that breaks into your apartment, we are talking about the person who steals your car, we are talking about all of the people who choose crime because there are no jobs in South Africa, particularly for those who suffer from a poor education.  In other words, on one hand one might feel that those laws help you, but you pay for them in so many other ways including the Rand declining against the Dollar, and you having to pay more money every time you put petrol in your car.  Nothing comes for free and that is one of the big costs that you pay, when you have laws in South Africa that chase away international businesses because very few other countries, and certainly no developing countries, go so out of their way to favour the employee over the employer and international companies and business people can choose where they are going to grow and develop their business.  They simply don’t make the choice to go and put their business in a country where they are going to waste all their time and money at the CCMA with all sorts of nonsense including people who stage resignations in order to secure a higher salary and when their bluff is called, then claim they were constructively dismissed!