Will a basic income grant give people a reason not to work?

Will a basic income grant give people a reason not to work?

  • Yes

    Votes: 209 67.4%

  • No

    Votes: 73 23.5%

  • Other

    Votes: 28 9.0%
  • Total voters
    310
Barbarian Conan said:
Sadly, in some cases you are wrong.

My dad's previous domestic worker's son is the case in point. He quit his job at Pep because it paid to little. Life is much better sponging on his mom's government pension.
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Yea but that sounds more like the great resignation than him getting by on a R300 grant.
Don't think anyone can get by on that R300 grant and don't really think it will do much to help anyone. especially those that don't want to be helped.

Perhaps it's time to do food stamps though...
 
While I understand the need for poverty elevation, this is not the way to do it. It will become a small incentive to quit trying to find employment.
 
No and Yes. So other. It depends on peoples levels of comfort. If you give them enough to get by but they can't afford say an iPhone sub and a netflix sub on it, it might get them to do more. Also, education, education, education.

Also, it does not need to be in the form of a lump sum of money, discount on education / health insurance / vehicle to travel to your job and back and such can also help a lot. And knowing that you can have your staple foods on the table without having to stress about that would also help.

But for that you need to have an economy that is functioning and not being dragged down by massive unemployment due to rampant mismanagement and corruption.
 
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Reactions: Yuu
How are they going to determine who is unemployed?
Most gardeners (for example) get paid in cash. My gardener probably makes about R4-5k a month.

Nothing stops him from getting the grant as well.
So basically the tax payer will be paying for grants for not only unemployed, but also those informally employed.
 
No, because those that see it as a reason not to work will be very disillusioned by the increased cost of living and won't be able to maintain their standard of living through this grant. Anyway, on the other hand it will hopefully open up the employment market to start looking beyond BEE compliance issues when appointing people. One can only hope. :thumbsup:
 
This is one of those questions which I really think should not be an opinion question, but a factual numbers driven question.

Example of something similar - there is a great number of people that believe poor people are having kids because of social grants. And this is simply not true in general - there are hard numbers for it - our fertility rate (babies per woman) has consistently been dropping like a stone across all races, and the median age of women giving birth has trended upwards. So while it is easy to find a single example of somebody having a child for support and build a narrative around it, the data says the general picture is something completely different. And before somebody comes to me telling me the data is wrong because people don't register their children, I have to immediately come back and say "You can't get a social grant for a child that is not registered".

So above is one example of what the general opinion is diametrically opposed to the hard data.

So what about a R350 / month grant? I don't have the data, but I think people should research it. My gut feel tells me it won't do much to deter job seekers but it is almost impossible to survive on R350 /month - but happy if research proofs me wrong. I also have a gut feel that the grant oils the wheels and brings people out of the informal economy -- unless people were dying of hunger they still ate whilst not getting any money which means they bartered for food, or grew their own or similar. The R350 will simply bring those transactions into the formal economy.

I also want to know what happens to that R350 -- it might be a good economic stimulus because if a poor person gets R350 they will probably not save it or spend it on imported luxuries -- they will probably spend it quite fast at their local Checkers on food items, which most probably have been produced in South Africa. It might very well be that a big portion of the R350 is recaptured as tax.

Of course the above two paragraphs are speculation, but these are hypothesis that can be tested and we can make the decision on hard data, instead of people's feeling about the "New Swart Gevaar". News and politicians gets you by making you scared of something.


For me personally, I would like to see some basic income grant, but I would like government spending prioritized based on the impact it has. The question is often not should we do X, but more is X a bigger priority than Y. E.g. Is basic income grant a bigger priority than national health insurance? E.g. Is basic income grant more important the some SOE? It is all about trade-offs, and I do believe we can make these trade-offs based on hard data.
 
Johand said:
Snip!
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Seems you should get out more often.

Go to any post office come SASSA-time. Look around at the clothes, shoes and jewellery that the so-called "unemployed" are wearing, and the cellphones that they carry when they collect their grants.

The grant recipient is supposed to collect said grant in person (IFAIK), so it's quite an easy task (as different grants are paid on different days) to see which grant recipient looks out-of-place in the queue.
 
@bwana you should do another poll sometime

"Will a basic income grant give people a reason not to commit crime?"​

 
ShaunSA said:
And you arrived at this conclusion how exactly?

Three days of reading facebook postings?
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No Shaunie, it's common sense in the political environment that is South African politics.

Anyways, I'd canned my previous account a month ago, but came back to ask a few questions on something else and partake in the sports thread. Less dodgy irritations there resorting to horrible attempts at sarcasm to make themselves feel better :)
 
BlackBeltHuh said:
No Shaunie, it's common sense in the political environment that is South African politics.

Anyways, I'd canned my previous account a month ago, but came back to ask a few questions on something else and partake in the sports thread. Less dodgy irritations there resorting to horrible attempts at sarcasm to make themselves feel better :)
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Oh it's common sense when you do it :ROFL::ROFL::ROFL:

Thank goodness we have real experts to rely on :cool:

nfi who you are/were/will be
 
ShaunSA said:
Oh it's common sense when you do it :ROFL::ROFL::ROFL:

Thank goodness we have real experts to rely on :cool:

nfi who you are/were/will be
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That's how you dig your way our of the embarrassing hold you placed yourself. Nicely done Shaunsie.

Anyways, besides the fact you've always reacted angrily to anything ever said and tried to throw that little tantrum online, it's a free and open forum so the original statement stands.

Do some digging and find out how political parties would want to do things for their voters so that said voters would end up continually voting for them. It's as old as politics itself really.
 
BlackBeltHuh said:
That's how you dig your way our of the embarrassing hold you placed yourself. Nicely done Shaunsie.

Anyways, besides the fact you've always reacted angrily to anything ever said and tried to throw that little tantrum online, it's a free and open forum so the original statement stands.

Do some digging and find out how political parties would want to do things for their voters so that said voters would end up continually voting for them. It's as old as politics itself really.
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tl/dr/dc
 
Yes as I have offered them more to come and work for me, but always say the government is looking after them and they make more money on the street,
 
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