Durban - How much is enough?
The question has been lurking in my brain for years, but deeper reflection has been hampered by severe dyscalculia, a hopeless weakness in understanding numbers and economics beyond the household budget, and sometimes even that fails.
Now Covid-19 has forced a confrontation. I have always been confounded at people’s willingness to fork out thousands of rands for a frock, a handbag, shoes, suit or a watch. Have a mansion, or two, travel on private jets, jewellery that could fund a small nation, and still looks like cubic zirconias. Cars that cost more than those mansions.
How is it possible that a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, store check-out person, police officer (no defence for bad cops here), hospital or office cleaner, teacher, train, bus or taxi driver (love ’em or hate ’em, they move our workforce) and so many others who work to keep the world going live hand to mouth, while celebs, top sports people, politicians, and tycoons rake in millions?
The bottom line has become the poverty line.
“Sport stars” will say they have a limited career time span and therefore must cash in. They are “elite” and spend hours working hard off the court, pitch or course. But some of them make more in one season than your average working Joe and, especially, Josephine (who earns less than Joe in the same job) will do in a lifetime. And Joe and Josephine may be just as good at their jobs and spend many hours doing it with no glory.
Most of society’s schlebs get there through outrageousness, a quick Instagram finger, bit-part scandal or the family name.
Music and movie stars say they deserve part of the box-office profits, but I wager the folk (many artists in their own right) who help create these things don’t get to share.
In a bleak attempt to understand this problem, I tried a little googling on British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), (government should make policies that drive consumer demand), and Scottish “father of economics” Adam Smith (1723-1790), who “invented” GDP and argued that free markets regulate themselves driven by competition, supply and demand, and self-interest.
Some years ago, I also waded halfway through the autobiography of former chair of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, but had to stop. Most of his argument invariably led to the loss of thousands of people’s jobs, without regard to the fact that these were real people, real lives, real hardship - not just numbers in the unemployment line. It made me angry. I may have missed something near the end.
Unemployment numbers are more than a breaking news chyron.
When did the car/s you drive, your home address, the branding become a mark of “success”? Why aren’t your character, your contribution to your society, integrity, honour and hard work the measuring stick?
Capitalism is out of control because enough is never enough, and there are millions of shareholders shouting for more. Communism fails because the people who “run” it use it for self-enrichment, a human failure of great consequence.
Enough should allow everyone to sleep with comfort and a clear conscience about how that enough was earned.
It’s time those who don’t suffer chronic dyscalculia think of another box because, frankly, our current societal boxes ain’t being ticked.
- Slogrove is the news editor