It may be time to pull out the old Milo Optimisation Post. It was trivial 5 years ago and it’s still intended as funny rather than serious, but the sad, sad thing is that the lesson still hasn’t been learnt in our airports and probably a range of other entities. The security check point is…
In South Africa we have a major income inequality problem. It’s historical (accumulated wealth, accumulated skills) and current (disastrous public education) and isn’t going away any time soon. The free market argument here is to forget about income inequality per se and focus on economy friendly, business friendly policies that will grow the entire economy…
I can’t believe how the same blog post is basically exactly relevant, word for word, 3 years later. Eskom produces electricity for the country and makes a profit or a loss doing so. This profit or loss goes back into treasury, which, inefficiencies aside, belongs collectively to the citizens of South Africa. If prices are…
Should South Africa import Chinese television sets? Your answer to this question depends probably on your education. If you were university educated in South Africa, you are likely to be in the market at various times in your life for a large LED backlit LCD panel with a high refresh rate and more HDMI inputs…
Pick n Pay is starting to gain some useful insights into customer behaviour and purchasing decisions at different stores. They’re using coffee as a key product to better understand who buys what, where and when. Â They’re tossing out (more likely de-emphaszing) LSMs as a method of categorising customers and moving to more sophisticated measures (including…
Some interesting thoughts on what drives Germany’s apparent success. The article does understate the problem that Germany’s success is significantly export driven – not everyone can export for obvious reasons. Also, the author notes that consumption has grown more slowly than economic growth without understanding that is exactly the source of an export-encouraged boom. Growth…
The DA is quite negative on the new taxes proposed for the mining sector. They seem to argue that higher taxes will discourage employment and investment. I haven’t analysed the details thoroughly so maybe they are correct. I suspect that it’s more dogmatic following of views from those who don’t understand the pros and cons…
There are times when I’m impressed with elements of government and the ANC. It took them far too long, they allowed too much debate and uncertainty, but their ultimate conclusions on nationalisation and how to direct additional mineral wealth back into the fiscus, further develop a beneficiation industry around the mining industry are solid. I…
