Why Some Countries Create Jobs and Others Export People

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.5 • 692 Ratings

🗓️ 24 March 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Broadcasting from South Africa, a country of huge energy, huge potential, and brutally high unemployment, we use that lens to ask what actually creates jobs? From there, we go back to Ireland in 1990, when employment had barely moved in forty years and emigration still felt like the national destiny. So what changed? We unpack the extraordinary shift that turned Ireland from an economy exporting its young people into one of the strongest job creators in Europe: devaluation, falling interest rates, the Berlin Wall dividend, peace in the North, American investment, and a transformed national mood. Politicians love talking about “job creation,” yet jobs are not created by speeches, slogans, or government press releases. Jobs come after demand, after sales, after risk, after somebody decides to build something, sell something, and back themselves. In other words: jobs are derived from entrepreneurship.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.
0:07.9	This podcast is powered by ACAST.
0:13.2	How are you doing there?
0:14.5	It is time for the podcast.
0:16.4	The podcast today, John, comes from very, very far away.
0:21.7	I am down in the tip of Africa.
0:25.6	I am in Johannesburg, the capital of the Republic of South Africa.
0:31.4	And again, an amazing city.
0:34.9	On your jollies again, Mac.
0:36.7	On your jollies, John. I'm working hard for you. I'm working hard for the listener. I'm... For humanity. You're working hard for humanity. I'm working for humanity. Nobody works as hard for humanity as I do. No. I gave a speech yesterday and I'm going to give one tomorrow and then I'm going to come home.
0:54.5	But I've been here.
0:55.7	I arrived here on St. Patrick's Dayjo.
0:58.7	Yeah.
0:58.9	And I got under the taxi and went into the bar of the hotel, the Cullinan, I was staying at.
1:06.0	And it's interesting.
1:07.0	The influence of Irish people is all over the place here.
1:09.9	So Cullinan was obviously an Irish surname.
1:13.5	It was named after a town in the province of Guitang was probably the Transvaal then.
1:20.3	And it was where they found the largest or one of the largest diamonds in the first iteration of the South African Bonanza, which was a diamond
1:29.7	bonanza. And of course, who found it? A geyser called Thomas Cullinan. Thomas Cullinan was, of course,
1:37.5	of Irish extraction. His father had been in the British army and had actually been killed
1:42.0	in the British army here here and he was born in
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from David McWilliams, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of David McWilliams and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.