OPINION: Corporate South Africa is rolling out the big guns to spike momentum towards a universal basic income grant that threatens to expose their sick graveyard economy.
The corporate alpha males are once again in full flight claiming “only we alone” can save South Africa from its pandemic-ravaged economy, displaying the uneducated, arrogant plumage of privilege.
Adding insult to 2008’s injuries, the corporate risk analysts were blindsided by a pestilence anticipated by virologists since the 1980s; or by a cursory reading of absurdist philosopher Albert Camus’ 1947 novelA universal basic income was conceived as a rising tide to lift all boats, after realising that pissing on the poor — known by its euphemism trickle-down economics — would eventually splinter the ground wealth stood on.
Globally governments responded to the Covid-19 crash with the 2008 corporate socialist default setting of raiding public coffers, refloating private business, inflating stock markets and guaranteeing chief executives bonuses. UBI generics to prevent society collapsing into the pit of hunger, mall looting, truck burning and Big Men squabbling over spoils was an afterthought.
Mentored by Rupert Murdoch — the “tits-and-ass” media mogul who found immense wealth in Big Lies, climate change denialism, anti-vaxxer narratives, xenophobia and eroding liberal democracies — Hersov’s “alternative facts” belittle his very expensive Michaelhouse private education. . Opaque fees scooped from the public purse by corporate luminaries, such as US business management firm McKinsey’s R900-million invoice for activities as demanding as switching on the coffee machine without the butler’s assistance, is more than easy money. It curdles money’s velocity — the rate at which money circulates — to sour any sustainable economic recovery.
The kleptocratic and corporate classes’ limp-money velocity is from satisfying tech gadget fetishes or imported entry-level R100 000 bicycles for another peacock-fashion corporate sport, while illegally salting about five percent of GDP off-shore annually “through various tax dodges and transfer pricing gimmicks,” Bond, citing treasury data, says.
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