Chris Giles makes an important point that western governments’ unsustainable finances will not be easily remedied with higher taxes on the rich and that increasing debt loads will conflict with long deferred public investments (“Beware the lure of fiscal fairy tales”, Opinion, February 14).
However, policymakers could pan right to Aveek Bhattacharya’s column on the UK nanny state and taxes on sugar (Opinion, February 14) for a sense of how financial issues could be viably ameliorated. Productive taxes like those on sugary foods can both raise revenue and reduce public expenditures.
Giles’s fear that the rich avoid new concentrated levies also doesn’t apply to the most famous productive tax, a tax on the unimproved value of land.
A land value tax and other taxes on automobiles and alcohol disproportionately raise revenue from the rich while reducing socially expensive activities.
New and more productive means of finance might very well be the fairy tale for worry at the exchequer.
John Gorman
Washington, DC, US
