I am Associate Professor of Economics at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), where I teach macroeconomics, econometrics and portfolio theory among other courses. I was economic advisor to the ministers of economic development in 2010 and finance in 2017. I also worked as economic advisor to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). Any views I express are mine alone and do not reflect those of the University of the Witwatersrand.
I believe that economics is about the search for solutions to what John Maynard Keynes called “the outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live [which] are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes”. Underlying this failure is a tendency of the capitalist system, observed 60 years earlier by Karl Marx, which on the one side, concentrates capital in fewer and fewer hands and on the other side, produces social and economic hardships.
I also believe that economics and politics are two sides of the same coin: politics is about power, its content and structure, and how it is applied to ensure that one set of solutions to social problems is chosen by the state and not the others. Politics therefore determines the types of solutions that society chooses in an attempt to resolve its problems, some of which were identified by Keynes and Marx, among others.
My commentary in this Blog is therefore concerned about the issues that intersect politics and economics.