I was happy to see that my blog post “Who needs a safety net?” stimulated a lively debate, which was exactly its purpose. However, so many points have been raised that I have decided to write a new post on the topic rather than answering each one of them separately.
One of the current economic mysteries of the South Caucasus and the source of certain uneasiness on the part of world development organizations has been the significant rise in the recent years of the consumption to output ratio in Georgia.
The very sharp seasonal fluctuations in the prices of many agricultural products in Georgia are indicative of the state of the Georgian agricultural sector. Agriculture provides a safety net for a very large number of jobless people who might otherwise be starving and thus serves a very important social function.
Recently the Georgian government started a campaign for attracting foreign capital to the country. A whole page ad (pictured above) runs on one of the first pages in the print edition of The Economist for already a month.
The Great Trek was a defining moment in the history of the Boer, white South African farmers of Dutch descent. In the early 19th century the Boer migrated from the Cape Colony to the interior of what is today South Africa.