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also disappeared in Zimbabwe. In South Africa only 5% of the population pays personal
income taxes of the total tax revenues of $100 billion, 46% receive government handouts and
more than half work for the government - although the latter is not that different from the
percentage of people working for the USA federal, state, and county governments. [In the USA
according to the US Census Bureau, also just less than half the population receives government
handouts, nearly two thirds of government outlays, amounting to $2.2 trillion (2010). This
outlay is for important government programs including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security,
Unemployment Insurance and other reasons (like Earned Income Tax Credit supplement for
low wage earners), mostly expanded by Republican Administrations to woo the elderly voter,
but at what stage does this become overwhelming for both the economy and the individual
workers belief that hard work will get you ahead in the USA. With the financial problems, the
number of people receiving food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) has
grown from 26 million to 46 million at a cost from $33 billion to $75 billion, worthwhile
expenditure during a time of wanting but hopefully will be reversed once the economy
recovers. Although not the same, tax payers also get government assistance in a sense by being
allowed tax deductions for children, mortgages, tax deductions for banking money for college
education, etc. Is this belief in helping both those that are struggling and those that bear the
burden of government costs because of fairness something innate in our natures, as for example
San Bushmen egalitarian sharing of meat? In the USA 2% of the population pays half the total
personal taxes in absolute amount; the top 1% pay about 40% and the top 5% pay about 60%.
On the other hand, the bottom 50% of tax payers (many do not) pay 1.96%. For the upper tax
brackets they spend more than half the year working to paying taxes; higher in total than
Sweden with less of the benefits (free health care, work unemployment insurance, universities,
and pension). It is estimated that $2.8 trillion in the USA is transferred from tax revenues to
government benefit programs and on average a person contributes over seven thousand two
hundred dollars to the money transfer, or $29,000 for a family of four. One of the major
welfare reforms enacted by President Clinton in 1996 was that states had to have half of all
recipients on some type of work training or education program and the results was that in three
years 4.7 million of recipient's gained productive jobs and caseloads declined by 54%. This
federal welfare requirement is going to be dropped by Health and Human Services. Just a
surprising tax fact: company tax rate in Sweden is 25% and will go down further whereas in
the USA it is 35%.]
South Africa has three major policies when it comes to dealing with its 1.2 million square
kilometers of land, other than those of protection of land rights enshrined in the constitution,
namely: restitution of land to owners who were forced off land by the apartheid regime; tenure
for African laborers who have lived on farms for a long time; and redistribution of 30% of
arable land to the disadvantaged by 2014 at a cost of $10 billion dollars (despite only $4
billion is budgeted). The latter has been a particular source of contention between the Zuma
regime and the Youth League of the ANC. By 2009, only 11.1% of farm land had been
redistributed. Only 12.1% is arable. All commercial land has also been frozen due to the fact
that since 2007, South Africa has gone from being a net food exporter to a food importer
despite most of the crops being genetically modified to tolerate the conditions (cotton 92%,
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