One of us is a millionaire, the other a care worker. The cruel divide between rich and poor disgusts us both
Julia Davies and Winsome Hill
Well, let’s see now. We doubt that it’s beyond the wit of womankind to work out how standing orders work. A couple of hundred pounds a week sent from one account to t’other - £10k a year say - would seem to solve matters. After all, a large part of the initial observation is that such a sum would make no difference to the one while it would radically change prospects for the second:
The cost of living crisis affects all of us, but it doesn’t affect us equally. One of us struggles to afford the spiralling price of the weekly shop, while the other can shop as before, unaffected by rising food prices. One of us fears turning on the heating to keep her house warm, while the other can heat her home and travel for some winter sun without a second thought.
Well, get on with it then.
Or even, as we’ve been pointing out for 16 years now.
Economists have a handy term called “revealed preferences”. In colloquial English it means “look at what people do, not what they say, and certainly never take notice of what they say others should do”.
Yes, and this leads to the idea that we can test who really believes by what they do:
LAST YEAR there were five people in Britain who thought that their taxes were too low. No, this isn’t the number of people who have called for higher taxes. Rather, it is those who were so convinced of the righteousness of state spending that they voluntarily sent extra money to the Treasury.
That’s not a large portion of the population there. It’s not even a large portion of the millionaires in the country.
Cheques, by the way, should be made out to “The Accountant, HM Treasury”, and sent to 1 Horse Guards Road, London SW1A 2HQ. A 2nd-class stamp is sufficient and you are encouraged to add a covering note so that your donation is spent in the way you like.
When the tax’n’spend brigade show us their thank-you notes, we should listen: until then we should ignore them and insist that our money remains, fructifying, in our pockets.
Not that we’d actually put it in this manner, dreadfully demotic and even crude as it is. But until we do actually see those voluntary sums - and the thank you letters - we’re likely to conclude that those moaning in this manner are full of it.