Absolutely wrong

I was surprised and concerned to see that both Labour MSP Elaine Smith (your article, 28 March) and the Scottish Government define “absolute poverty” as living in a household whose income is below 60 per cent of the median income, which is apparently £248 per week. By contrast, since October 2015 the World Bank has defined “absolute poverty” as living on less than $1.90 per day, which equates to £1.35 per day. What Scottish progressives are attempting to pass off as ”absolute poverty” is actually what in normal English is called “relative poverty”, which is not a measure of poverty at all but of income distribution.

Given that in any free society based on voluntary transactions in a market economy, there will be an income distribution, progressives are guaranteed “relative poverty” to complain about.

No doubt the alarmist headlines about increasing child poverty are being used to support the Scottish Government’s paying higher levels of welfare benefits.

Of course, there are policies for the state and behaviours for the individual that reduce and, over time, gradually eliminate poverty. The first and most important of these is marriage. Government policy should not be value-neutral, but should strongly encourage people to marry monogamously before having children, and then to remain married.

The first step in fighting poverty, or any other great social ill, is intellectual honesty; Scottish progressives are yet to take it.

OTTO INGLIS

Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh