Reverse snobbery

Published: 20 January, 2011

• I READ with much distaste your report on the Fairness Commission’s meeting in which Professor Richard Wilkinson and Liberal Democrat councillor Tracy Ismail chose to resort to arrogant, self-serving, class-based rhetoric instead of constructive suggestions on how to improve the community (Plea to his Town Hall ‘parents’ from the young man who grew up in care, January 14).  

While the encouragement of voluntarism is no doubt a priority, Prof Wilkinson’s call to narrow the income gap is baffling. Why is he so concerned with how much other people earn? Surely improving the lives of everyone is more important than ensuring that the rich earn less, even if this means that the poor earn less as well. 

This jealousy-ridden demand for equality at all costs is damaging to legitimate discourse on community involvement. Likewise, Cllr Ismail’s sneering accusation that the rich don’t contribute much is little more than pathetic reverse class snobbery. 

Who does she think pays most of the tax from which her generous salary, as well as Islington’s vital public services, is drawn? The so-called “wealthy” were probably working late while these various community meetings were being held.

DAVID COLLINS
N5

• IT makes very little sense for Islington Fairness Commission members to call for a “levy on the rich”. For many years we have had one. It is called the 40 per cent tax rate, with 50 per cent now charged to the top 1.1 per cent.

HM Revenue and Customs predicts that this top one per cent will contribute more than 26 per cent of the total income tax raised, to fund public services. This strikes me as a more than fair contribution from the wealthiest and most successful section of society. This does not include the contribution they make through purchases and consumer spending, which puts money into the wider economy and generates VAT, as well as the jobs which their businesses directly create.

In the 1970s, when tax rates on these people were far higher, their income tax contribution was only 11 per cent. The message is quite clear: the higher the rate of tax charged, the less money is brought in. All you do is drive your job creators out of the country, as happened then, to pay their taxes and create their jobs in someone else’s economy, not ours. If taxes are cut, more money is raised, and you get more investment, creating more jobs.

To call for more tax rises to attack those people who are already contributing the most is therefore both insane and unjust. Members of Islington Fairness Commission should concentrate on their remit, not dredge up the politics of envy.

CHRIS WILLIAMS
Calabria Road, N5