After reading the article, marcus warns on joblessness, I am once again left feeling rather annoyed, angered, and frustrated about the bleak situation of our countries unemployment crisis.
As I see it, there is no one singular entity to blame for the high unemployment but WE, as in the royal 'we', are collectively to blame. Not the government, nor the banks, and their CEO’s, but US!!! Yes, you and me…
Before you dismiss me, I ask you to do me one favour: ladies, pick up your hand bag, and gentlemen, take out your wallet. Now have a look at the 'made in' label… Let me guess, it was made in China, or Malaysia, or India, and so forth. Now, repeat that with five of the closest items around you.
Maybe they should have asked the American 'occupy Wall Street' protestors to do this with their clothing … I highly doubt they are willing to forgo buying cheep name-brand clothing made elsewere to support clothing made in the USA. It is far easier in our society to blame the CEO who receive a gushing bonus all because he or she ran to buy the clothing.
I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t import anything because that’s just ridiculous. What I am rather saying is that there are certain industries that all countries, not just ours, should safe guard.
It is my opinion that food and clothing are two of the most important of those such industries as they are both labour intensive and categorised as 'needs not wants' items. All countries should be able to independently satisfy their very basic human needs.
Also, I’m not saying don’t import any of those items, rather we need to just be pickier about what we do import. For instance, let’s make an agreement with Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece to import olive oil. Why? Because it’s a specialty product of THIERS. Similarly to Rooibos products and South Africa.Let's import Italian made leather shoes and export treated hides. Let's not import bad quality “Red shirts” from China, but rather make them locally. But, if you must import from China then lets import green tea and electronics.
Perhaps, or certainly, it will be slightly more expensive to have “Red shirts“ made locally, but let me ask you this:
When Queenspark closed-up shop in Cape Town and started to import their goods instead, did you see, from one day to the next, a fifty percent reduction in the price-tag, or did you ever see any reduction on the price-tag. The answer is no. Do you know why? Because we, as a people, continue to support them. We still buy their clothes (which, according to my Mom and Aunt, have suffered on the quality side as well). So then really they not are just imported, over-priced, bad quality products?
So now what do we have? More unemployed people relying on grants, less money in the budget for education because we using it to feed people, more crime and unrest because people don’t have sufficient money, and sit ideally by, unemployed day-in and day-out. How do we fix this? Simple. We increase taxes and the price of goods. How narrow minded of us! The gap between the middle class and struggling poor is getting smaller and smaller in the wrong direction. Certainly the wrong direction for a democratic capitalist society. By not supporting local goods we are cutting off our noses to spite our faces. I’m sure your salary never got an increase in keeping with the increase in the price of goods. In fact, if you were lucky enough to get an increase this year was it even enough to counter act inflation??
My suggestion is that we make a decision to act selfishly. The next time you go shopping for a “Red Shirt”, have a look were it was made and ask yourself if it could have been made locally? If the answer is yes, be selfish enough to put it back on the rack and walk away. By not buying the “Red shirts” for sale, we will force companies to change there buying habits which will create more employment locally and, in the end, help us.
Even though some people, their countries too, believe that certain jobs are no longer 'good enough' for them, people must realise that every job is important and necessary. From the street sweeper, to the packer at the end of the till, to the doctor and civil servants. Each is important for the collective us to prosper.
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