Sir, - I grow increasingly frustrated when people deplore the growing gap between rich and poor, for it seems to me that, before the question of tax is even considered, it could hardly be otherwise so long as National Wage Agreements between the social partners award all pay increases in percentages.
I'm no economist - in fact I left school at 16, so perhaps I'm missing something glaringly obvious to those with third level education - but I would have thought a rise of say, 5 per cent to someone on an income of £40,000; a year would bring them up to £42,000 a year, whereas the same percentage rise to someone on an income of say, £5,200 a year would leave them still struggling on £5,460. Of course the gap has widened!
Until National Wage Agreements are awarded in sums of money instead of percentages, for any of the social partners to shed tears over an ever widening gap seems to me to put them amongst the crocodiles.-Yours, etc.,
121 Upper Leeson Street,
Dublin 4.