Basic income grant could boost ailing economy

It’s almost counter-intuitive: the proposed basic income grant – the dreaded “dole” payments so hated by the comfortable middle class – could actually be the shot in the arm of our ailing economy needs.

Sure, the payments will be much higher than the current emergency Covid grants of R350 a month – which have been extended to February next year – and they will cost billions … but those billions will be injected straight back into the economy.

This stimulus, say experts, could create demand for goods and service and, in the process, help boost salaries and wages.

While there are many, raised in the capitalist lore of disdain for social grants, who will decry this as creeping socialism, the reality is that even countries which are built on the free market system do this all the time.

Take that quintessential capitalist state – the USA. Its government has poured more into the economy in unemployment benefits and concessions for business in the past 16 months than the country has lost financially in terms of the negative impacts of Covid.

The recent riots and looting here, while they may have been ignited by political plotters, were nevertheless a stark reminder of how unequal our country is and how we are sitting atop the clichéd powder keg of poverty.

Perhaps now is the time to take the plunge, bite the bullet (for the taxpayers who will foot the bill) and invest (yes it is an investment – in peace) in trying to close that poverty gap.

It might be the time to examine why chief executives of companies earned hundreds of times what their lowest paid employees do and seriously ask the question: how much should be enough?

These are not, as some might argue, the first steps down the road to communism. They might be the first steps to salvation.