OPPOSITION to a basic income grant (BIG) falls into two categories — there are the free marketeers who preach an extreme form of market fascism in which economic losers need to be punished in order for the system to sustain itself, along with the exploitation of labour for profit, and for whom welfare is anathema (since it would mean relief from the punishment “incentive” and dilution of the motive forces behind capitalist competition), then there are the market liberals like Sean Archer (Cape Times Oct 24) who puzzle themselves with theories that merely restate the problem of poverty in terms of pseudo-scientific empiricism.
How much will poverty alleviation cost? How many poor are there in South Africa, and how can we distinguish between the poorest of the poor and the not-so-poor? Questions like these trouble the minds of liberals who have never experienced poverty, or who fear that tackling this issue will erode their status and position in society, effectively overturning the apple-cart as it were. The definition of what it means to be poor, as Archer intimates, must inevitably be rewritten by a form of redistribution that tackles the harshest of economic cruelties and depredations.