More state control does not mean better economy

JOHN Highton (Opinion, 20.10.20) quotes me as saying that many farmers and small businesses do not pay tax.

What I actually said (Opinion, 25.9.20) was ‘‘farmers and small businesses do not, as a rule, make large or even any profit annually,’’ which is vastly different to his inaccurate allegation.

May I point out to your correspondent that all voters pay tax, whether on income or through GST.

Dr Highton needs to explain why it is so wrong to grow a business, with little reward during your working life, in the hope of building a capital sum to retire on.

He suggests widening the tax base. Would that be akin to saying, a new GST?

Few would disagree with the need to constantly reassess our economic paradigms to better suit our everchanging world, but all I seem to read from Dr Highton and Simon Noble (Opinion, 5.10.20) is the need to reinvent socialism, or possibly even communism.

I further note Dr Highton’s comment that we need to revolutionise our production and distribution along with what he describes as a broken financial system — all of which bears an uncanny resemblance to the preferred world of Carl Marx, Joseph Stalin and, more latterly, Robert Mugabe, which is state control of the means of production, distribution, consumption and exchange.

The socalled ‘‘trickle down’’ economic theory is often quoted by the Left to denigrate the existing tax system. I can only quote the brilliant economist Thomas Sowell, that no such theory has ever been found in even the most voluminous and learned history of economic theories.

I would certainly appreciate being shown examples of more and more state control leading to successful economies anywhere in the world and how such economies thrive under a high tax and low productivity regime. Gerrard Eckhoff

Alexandra ....................................

BIBLE READING: Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. — Isaiah 26.4.