3 AUGUST 1956, Page 18

Letters to the Editor

The Golden Chance C. A. Harrison

Nationalisation and Propaganda

Austen Aibti, MP

The Very Devil Lionel Bloch Sauce for the Gander Dorothy Smith Deification and Clarification Evelyn Waugh 'Paris Album' Peter Quennell *Women in Antiquity Charles Seltman

The Battlefields of Eton W. S. S. Lade!!

Poets of the Fifties J. D. Oakes, J. H. Campbell, Paul Casimir Back to Methuselah T. E. Bean THE GOLDEN CHANCE

Sia,—Mr. Ormsby Gore, in his article, appears to argue that because it is necessary to make substantial investments overseas taxation cannot be reduced. May I ask him, if taxation is not reduced just who is going to make these investments and what with? I agree that our recent economic troubles have been entirely of our own making. I believe that the main cause of our troubles is that the Treasury adheres rigidly to the fallacy that it is possible to reduce consump- tion at home by increased taxation. Surely our whole economic history since 1945 shows quite clearly that when taxation is increased the first casualty is savings and investment. People will always tend first to dip into exist- ing savings or make less new savings to main- tain their standards before going without. Similarly, when taxation is increased, com- panies have to increase their selling prices in order to leave the same net amount after tax available for investment. After all the dreary expedients, is it not time the Treasury tried large reductions in Government expenditure, large reductions in taxation coupled with real incentives to save? The last Budget only niggled at this. I believe if these things were done we should astonish ourselves by our economic health, vigour and confidence.— Yours faithfully,