Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.
Anyone who denies this statement is just willfully blind. But, it turns out, when you are focused on your ideology and not on real life, it’s pretty easy to end up being willfully blind. I’m really not casting aspersions on the ethics or motivations of people who believe in socialist solutions — I believe in some of those myself — but it’s crucial to face reality head-on.
So, let me just justify statistically my statement about the SA’s tax rate and the level of its services, because it’s relevant later on.
I suspect the best international comparison of the quality of government services is the performance of scholars in a maths test. Why? Because maths tests are probably the most functionally accurate measure we can devise for a service that can vary hugely in quality. You have, almost by definition, a set of questions that are binary — they are either right or wrong — combined with the ability for the service to make a meaningful difference.