Sir - Bravo to Tadhg Kearney (August 13th) for standing forth as a champion of what he ingeniously calls true liberalism and social justice.
Mr Kearney takes Dr Garret FitzGerald to task for abandoning those values in suggesting higher spending on health, education, and other public services, to be funded by higher taxation.
Alas! The small-minded opponents of true liberalism may use the factual inaccuracies in Mr Kearney's letter to pour scorn on his theories. French unemployment has fallen since the introduction of the 35-hour week.
The Irish experience does not, in fact, suggest that a low-tax regime is necessary for growth, which in turn leads to higher social spending: rapid Irish economic expansion began in the first half of the 1990s when personal taxation was unusually high. Lower taxation has ushered in that phenomenon which most undermines the real wealth of the poor: high inflation. But a good neo-liberal should not allow an intrinsically seductive economic theory to fall to the ground simply because the facts underpinning it may be misleadingly presented or even downright wrong.
Shame on you, Dr FitzGerald! Do you not perceive the evil tendency of your logic? Mr Kearney and I know that to impose additional taxation on (for example) those earning over £150,000 a year would be contrary to social justice. Besides, it might encourage them to become unemployed, or work less hard: all that pen-pushing in plush air-conditioned offices and networking at company dinners and on golf courses must be a dispiriting form of drudgery. Far better for a poor State pensioner, after a lifetime of back-breaking physical labour on or near the minimum wage, lying in a scratchy bed in an understaffed nursing home, waiting 18 months or more for the hip-replacement that never comes, to be able to smile inwardly, happy in the knowledge that he lives in a liberal country where social justice prevails.
I urge all Irish people, after the fashion of Jimmy Rabitte, to "say it long, and say it loud; I'm south-east Asian and I'm proud." Here let me add, though it was no part of Mr Kearney's argument, that this will neatly solve the problem we have with economic refugees seeking asylum. We may look the applicant gravely in the eye and say: "Sir, you must go elsewhere, for we already have 3.5 million honorary south-east Asians here and we are progressing, as swiftly as the genius of true liberalism may be implemented, to a good, competitive sweatshop economy."
I must make one small criticism of Mr Kearney's letter and it is this: men such as himself have no need for the tawdry art of masquerade. Away with this much misrepresented badge of "liberal". Stand boldly forth, Mr Kearney. Avow yourself to be what you most assuredly are: a Thatcherite. - Yours, etc.,
Danny Mansergh, Killiney Hill Road, Co Dublin.