A Chara, - In response to the PD suggestion that home-buyers are paying too much stamp duty, the representatives of various charities argue (September 21st) that any surplus money should be used to fund those who cannot fund themselves. Unfortunately, for reasons including poor education, physical or psychiatric disease, and drug or alcohol addiction, there will always be a section of every country's population that needs to be cared for by the community through the social welfare system.
It is equally true that there will never be enough funding to cater for every possible requirement, because people's "needs" are continually changing and expanding. Indeed, exactly what marginalised groups need is not agreed upon, even by the organisations working on their behalf. Also, the definition of poverty is constantly changing, so that what is considered poverty today would have been considered relative comfort in the 1980s. Many people grew up in what is now considered poverty, and were completely unaware of it.
The general improvement in the living standards of every sector of the population is no accident and is to be welcomed. All boats have risen, despite what some of the more hysterical socialists would have you believe. There is still "poverty", but there will always be those who have less than others. The system by which no one was allowed to have more than their neighbour has been tried, and it destroyed every Soviet country it touched. Everyone was equal - equally in poverty.
There is no shame in a government attempting to reduce the tax burden of its citizens. Unlike the Labour Party, Sinn Féin, the Greens and other socialists, I believe it is the duty of the Government to only take the minimum it requires from hard-working families. A government should not take the money people have gone out and earned just because it has the power to do it.
The reaction to the PDs' sensible suggestion to reduce stamp duty has been valuable, though. Despite Mr Rabbitte's protestations otherwise, it brought to the surface for all to see the ingrained belief of the left that tax cuts are always wrong. The mask slipped. - Yours, etc,
KEITH REDMOND, Howth Road, Sutton, Dublin 13.
Madam, - When will people realise that when someone sets out to buy a house, they have a given amount to spend: no more, no less. That figure includes the cost of the stamp duty.
If the PDs have their way, their house-buying constituents will not save the stamp duty (more often than not 9 per cent, in their case). Instead, their vendor constituents will pocket the extra money that the Exchequer would otherwise have taken.
The only effect that a given percentage of stamp duty has is to reduce the value of a property by that percentage: the vendor receives that much less, while the buyer must wait for the market to rise in order to recoup the same amount.
It is a fallacy to claim otherwise. - Yours, etc,
DENIS MORTELL, Friarsland Road, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14.