McCreevy’s tax argument is just a cover for human greed

ON television news (May 7), I heard EU Internal Market and Services Commissioner Charlie McCreevy argue against taxing the rich.

One of his arguments was that the economy was driven by “human nature”.

Apparently his position is that high taxes for the rich restrict the natural tendencies of humans.

I would have thought that if McCreevy was really confident about his argument he would have said what he really meant, instead of using a euphemism.

For when he referred to “human nature” what he actually meant was human greed. I agree individual human greed drives free market capitalism.

Indeed, it drives it to collapse, as we are witnessing now. Some might argue McCreevy has some responsibility for this.

However, I cannot agree that individual greed is an inherent component of human nature. I know very little about the development of the human race, but it seems to me that while the fight for survival might have conditioned human beings naturally to be selfish when the essentials of life were in short supply, and while this may have eventually developed into a conscious decision to store some essentials in anticipation of hard times, surely they would not have been driven to store endlessly even when they had more than enough. Individual greed drives people to do that very thing.

The greed that drives capitalism also drives people to want more, even when they have more than enough.

Even a fortune of €1bn must be continually multiplied. This is not a natural state of affairs, although some might work to convince us it is.

I think individual greed has to be learned, and learned in a way that pushes aside man’s natural inclination to co-operate rather than to be self-seeking.

Surely this is demonstrated by the fact that billions of euro have to be spent to convince people

(a) that they want more than they need, and

(b) that they deserve to have more than they need.

Manufacturing consent for greed is what most advertising is about.

Also part of manufacturing consent for greed is when society, in the form of the media, politicians and educators, does not challenge the notion it is acceptable – indeed natural – that there should be huge inequalities with one person receiving €1m in salary and another the minimum wage while some people have several houses and others have none at all.

My experience over a fairly long life is that most people do not have a natural tendency to be greedy or even selfish. Indeed, they have a tendency to share even when times are hard.

I do not believe capitalist individualism is natural to human beings either. On the contrary, I believe the tendency of human beings is to cooperate. As with greed, consent for individualism has to be manufactured, too. Saying that greed is human nature, which is what McCreevy really said, is just a device used by wealthy capitalists and their usually wealthy political supporters to justify two things that cannot be justified from a human point of view: destructive free market capitalism, and the greed of those ridiculously wealthy people who make fortunes from it, usually at the expense of others.

Oh, and by the way, McCreevy is also wrong when he says we need property developers. In fact, they are the last people society needs at the moment.

What it really needs are builders of council houses to provide homes for the 60,000 people on the national social housing waiting list, and to build much-needed schools and other infrastructure.

Brian Abbott

Glencairn

Bishopstown Road

Cork