“As a white South African, you should have had all the priviledge of good education under apartheid”
Hi Rupeshhari:
-Yes I have I good education so let me put it to work to explaining one thing:
(amongst other things I majored in Economics in my B-com Law degree)
-I do not mean to be rude, just to clarify something.
-The one thing that makes “human capital” special is that it has increasing returns to scale, whereas all other capital (for instance machinery) has a diminishing return to scale.
What this means is if you increase the amount of machinery the output per machine (the total output divided by the total number of machines) will first increase in relation to the additional machines added and will then start to decrease. It looks like this:
Graph 1:
“Human capital” also looks like this except if you add “substantial education”, then it looks like this:
Graph 2:
The point that I am trying to make is this:
-I agree with you that black people were disadvantaged during apartheid and a result of this was that almost all black people were “low skilled workers”.
-The graph for “low skilled workers” is the same as the very top graph (graph 1).
-In other words 30 000 000 uneducated black people have a diminishing return to scale.
What this means is if you increase the amount of “low skilled workers” being used in the economy the output per “low skilled workers” (the total output divided by the total number of “low skilled workers”) will first increase in relation to the additional “low skilled workers” added and will then start to decrease.
-The point is that white people were not helped by the large number of “low skilled workers”. There were NO advantages for white people resulting from the suppression of black people as many people think. [We are not in ancient Egypt any more everyone (society as a whole) benefits from educating the population].
-I brought this topic up in second and third year economics and all 4 of my Lecturers agree with my conclusion.
-It is like the US recession dragging the whole world into recession.
-The only advantage according to most people might be that South Africa was one of the safest countries in the world (in white areas) before black people were allowed to integrate into white areas. (I would not know about this since I was very young in 1994.
-Thank you for your suggestions Rupeshhari, yesi can do almost all of the options you mentioned but my parents are teachers and I am concerned that they might not be able to take advantage of the options that are available to leave the country immediately, or under FSW.
-Thanx for the “heads up” with the police certificate (I am glad that the didn’t mess yours up)