Tax the rich, don’t axe public spending

EVERY other day in these pages we read of sleaze, financial shenanigans and abuse of position by politicians and those in the upper echelons of our public services and semi-state bodies.

Every Thursday we read Ivan Yates’ column.

As usual, he made a very readable contribution (April 14) full of original similes with lashings of figures and statistics which give his piece absolute credence.

In it, he advocates cutting public expenditure as a means of reducing our deficit and even identifies those areas where the chop should come.

Understandably, he doesn’t mention hitting the overpaid politicos nor scrapping their over-generous pensions with not a word of sending in the bulldozers to level the upper house.

Less is said of the invidious situation where the administrator is paid 30/50 times more than those who actually do the work.

He must realise that a regime of punitive taxation on the super rich would negate the necessity to hit the old and also would reduce the hardship on the low paid and unemployed.

If we all must share the burden, then the rich are not the group to remain untouched.

So, Mr Yates, a new thought, “tax, don’t axe”.

Patrick Dolan

Kinsale

Co Cork