The typical PAYE income taxpayer in SA, gross salary is R21k per month. At today's exchange rate the person working at minimum wages at Mcdonald's in the USA would earn this income in just two-thirds of a month. Just 3,5 million South Africans earn more than this amount. 1/7 The typical income tax payer in SA has a marginal 26% tax rate. In many other countries, this would be far less. In Florida, you would pay a marginal rate of less than 17% ($1350) (including health insurance and social security) &receive food stamps, housing allowance etc 2/7

SA is missing about 2 million tons of coal exports a month due to problems and theft at and from Transnet. The loss over the last 3 months at 2 million tonnes is R2,4 billion for the country. SA should be exporting 8 not 3,5 million so the potential loss is R5,4 billion. 1/2 The theft of cables has actual losses for the country. The looting and threats are real. R5,4 billion every month lost for, say, a year is R65 billion. The damage is huge, but no one is jailed, so more theft happens. Coal exports are lower today than in 1994 2

South Africa's default answer to underlying problems like unemployment, poverty and inequality has been for government to spend more. Sounds good hey? Well in this time unemployment has increase, poverty has increased and inequality is higher than at the end of Apartheid. Why? Money is never going to be enough if so few work and can pay taxes for the many on grants. Also, the government believes that government can fix everything but does not work hard itself. when you have the 7th high company tax burden to GDP in the world, you chase jobs away

Between 2019 and 2020 SA relative GDP per capita when compared to the world average dropped by the biggest margin since 1994. South Africans now have just under 71% of the income that average person living in the world updated data show. Yes, this is a train smash. South Africans are now firmly in the poor half as the GDP per capita ranking is now 107th out of 191 available with recent data. We are firmly on the way to the bottom third. Just another sad story....

Did some research for you. 100 000 tons of mined gold in 1966 did not exist! The amount in dollars is near 2000 times SA GDP so if it did get and was spent SA GDP would have increased 200000%! It is more money than the 500 richest people on earth combined! 1

https://twitter.com/SimonPGrindrod/status/1385311717966684167

As of 2019, there was 197 000 tons of gold. 34 000 tons are in central bank vaults and 43 000 in verifiable investment holdings. 93 000 tons in Jewellery, So the gold even if deposited now would have been noticeable. All the world's jewellery cannot make up the 100 000 deposit. 2

Expected future Headlines.
The city wishes to thank all the drug lords for donating money to unemployed waiters, Uber drivers, chefs.
In an unexpected gesture, all three major drug cartels donated part of their proceeds to hungry unemployed hotel, restaurant and travel staff. 1 One drug lord even stated they expected nothing but goodwill back from these donations.
Police, however, are not convinced that this is a purely humanitarian gesture as they expect tourism and leisure staff to help drug dealers avoid law enforcement. 2

Almost all people comply with C19 regulations. On social media, however, posts scream that people are not masking or social distancing. This pandemic has not been stopped, other than on islands, even with harsh lockdowns. It is a disease & no ones fault & snitches don't stop it 1 In fact, snitches make it worse as you are controlled by fear and that fear is a disease by itself. I don't even blame snitches as the Covid19 was mention in 46% of the time in all New York Times articles this year. This is a higher incidence than in either World War! 2

Countries that have started vaccines or will today.
1.Argentina
2.Bahrain
3.Belgium
4.Canada
5.Chile
6.China
7.Costa Rica
8.Croatia
9.Cyprus
10.Czech Republic
11.Denmark
12.Estonia
13.Finland
14.France
15.Germany
16.Greece
17.Hungary
18.Israel
19.Italy 20.Kuwait
21.Lithuania
22.Malta
23.Mexico
24.Oman
25.Poland
26.Portugal
27.Qatar
28.Romania
29.Russia
30.Saudi Arabia
31.Serbia
32.Slovakia
33.Spain
34.Switzerland
35.The United Arab Emirates
36.United Kingdom
37.United States of America

Over 4 million vaccine shots have been administrated by yesterday across 20 odd countries (probably more as not all countries have reported yet.) from Costa Rica to USA. By next week another 20 or so join the effort from Argentina to India to Slovakia. Wonder where SA is? Maybe we hear more tonight. It looks like about 40 countries will have vaccines rolling out by mid-January. US and China already surpassed 1 million jabs each this weekend. Russia at 700k UK 800K.

Your model predicts massive deaths & hospitalizations, you fail to include other factors such as the economy blame the media for alarmist predictions! businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/202… via @BusinessLiveSA "Our projections of the potential number of cumulative deaths have always been accompanied by ranges representing the uncertainty associated with them; whether the reporting on them was alarmist or not is outside of our control”

Where have all the workers gone. 11 years ago train and bus passengers where 53 million a month. The last quarter the average was 67 000. That means less than 0,2% (a fifth of a percent!) were left in the system. A 100% decline in last quarter yes Covid but what about May/June? Assuming monthly weekday journey (with leave entitlement) this would represent 1,35 million working adults. Same calculation means less than 3 500 last quarter on the rail. Even with pick up less than 7500 in June!!!

Do lockdowns work? Countries with less mobility from 5 activities such as work, public transport over last 4 months seem to have highest death rates. (Red equals at least 3 time world average death rate). Grey is above average but below 3 times. Green is below average. discuss.. Countries responded differently but mobility data from the norm gives actual activity data via cell phone movements. Over than Sweden the top ten death rates all had less people at work, less in shops, less entertainment & travelled less on public transport.

Model forecasts for Coved19 deaths in SA show SA death rate 18 times of current world average! Currently, the whole world daily deaths are about 4300 and decreasing. That means on average SA will record about 6% of the world deaths everyday. @waldimar 1 Furthermore, the measured symptomatic cases are 4,8 million the model suggests we will add 25% to the world caseload with just 0,75% of the world population! SA will have the 3rd highest death rate and the highest caseload ever! 2 @netwerk24

The growth in corona cases shows SA lockdown is not working. All these positive cases would have been transmitted during the lockdown. The weekly rate of infections are still on the up and rate of growth is speeding up Yes, the number of tests is higher but as can be seen, the % test that tests positive is higher too. Again this transmission happened during the lockdown.

looking at Covid19 cases per million population vs the median age.( Excluding small population countries). One can see that the higher the age generally the higher the number of cases per million people. 1/5 SA is in Red and pretty much where one would expect it to be. SA median age is 27,1 and the group of countries with an median age between 25 and 30 is 276 cases per million. SA is at 77 cases per million. highest average is over 45 years which equals 1752 cases per million 2/5

If SA has the same percentage of job losses that the USA currently has experienced SA will lose 2.768 million jobs! meaning employment drops from 16,42 to 13,65 million employed. If all the new job losers join the unemployment queue then the unemployment numbers will rise 1/7 from 10,38 million to 13,148 million. While SA also gets about net 600 000 new entrants into the job market every year, the unemployment number by year-end would rise to 13.75 million. SA could have more unemployed adults than employed! 2/7

I do not know enough but I know stats well enough. The peak of the epidemic in the world seems over for now. In the USA total deaths is not the 2,2 million first predicted and far lower than the revised 1,1 million predicted. The mainstream panic is not justified. 1 Other mainly top-rated scientists around the world are now making their voices clear. Latest ones are in Hamburg. They say the numbers do not justify the fear abendblatt.de/hamburg/articl… (use google translate) 2

The more business we allow now the fewer job losses will be. Not saying all business but saying those that can be done safely. Creating a job is far harder than losing 1 sustainable one. The Bazooka approach that SA is using will lead to far more deaths than the virus. Watch! For example, the grocery store can sell liquor, cigarettes, garden, hardware etc. Takeaways are no different to grocery deliveries. Clothing stores should also open as people need clothes etc.. If DSTV, MTN, ISP can deliver why not Takealot, Edgars or Pet store down the road? 2

Today is probably going to be a nightmare on the markets. There will be blood on the streets for sure. But the worst thing to do today is panic & sell everything. the next couple of weeks and months will see volatile times. You will get time to adjust your pension, stocks etc 1 To panic & make short-term decisions with your long-term savings is not something to do. Either your fund manager has already made these decisions or for you. If not fire them on another day and wait for the blood to dry. 2

Long bond slide shows how SA has decoupled from the ave emerging market bond. It shows that SA pays 421 basis points (4,2%) more when SA govt borrows than the ave EM, Since the firing of Nene the aver is 366 basis points. Markets not buying a good news story but risk increase 1 SA debt, therefore, costs R40 billion more per Trillion Rand! SA government has over R3 trillion in debt and with Eskom and others, this is costing our economy hundreds of billions each year. There is still some older debt but as we roll it over the cost of borrowing increases 2

If our Politicians & councillors care for us as honest hardworking citizens, they would:
Make traffic officials direct traffic at robots so we can get to work during load shedding. Provincial traffic police must also be roped in for this. Allhands-on deck for traffic flow
1/6 Local governments should actively seek out buying power from other sources even from rooftop solar, etc while Eskom & Nersa may not interfere (excepting safety).
Also, connect alternative systems such as gas to business and ratepayers at their expense!
2/6