When the troubles broke out in Kenya after the elections, a TV commentator described the country as one of Africa's successes.
If this is success, what does failure look like? So is Africa a basket case? It does not have to be but the continent needs land reform. The right sort of land reform. Which is not just land distribution.
This photograph comes from the Church Missionary Society, which like other Christian bodies, has projects all over Africa. It is good work, but never more than tinkering. Sadly, Catholic Church organisations do not have any better grip on the problem and the underlying issues of economic justice.
I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...
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