DISTRIBUTING PROFITS
SIR,—As a reader who has recently returned to the Spectator, I was distressed to find that Nicholas Davenport's thinking has hardly progressed at all during my absence (see The City Assessment,' August 3).
The problem with profits is not to restrict their total volume, as Davenport goes to tedious lengths to show. The real problem is what happens to those profits. Even Macmillan appears to recognise the present unfairness, and his answer to it will be, as he hinted, to vary the existing rates of tax on distri-
buted and undistributed profits. This is no solution, however, and the trade unions and the Liberal and Labour Parties have long realised that the present System itself is basically unjust. Liberals believe that a man who merely invests his money in a company has no more moral right tO the excess profits of that company than those who invest their skill and labour. Nicholas Davenport, in making no reference to this, would appear to be unaware of the problem, or worse still to be clearly committed in favour of the status quo-
ANTONY BUTCHER
Prospective Liberal Candidate, Hull North Liberal C'orner, Beverley Road, Hull
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