Letters: It’s time to share the wealth

Dear Editor

When you consider the vast array of skills developedand used every day by working people in all walks of life; it is truly amazing.

We all rely on the skills of others in so many ways.

Sometimes we forget that it is people like us who are providing all the goods and services that we take for granted. It is the ordinary working people who, with their skill and compassion, make life possible for everyone.

It is the same 99% of the peoplewho create, clean, repair and care for us that also generate the wealth, but have little control over. The ownership of that wealth has now become the property of others.

The workers who created the wealth now find themselves with no say in how it should be invested or distributed, and low pay and unfairness continues.

The workers who created the wealth now find themselves with no say in how it should be invested or distributed and low pay and unfairness continues.

The wealth created by the 99% now belongs to the few. It is time that this historic confidence trick is challenged and all workers are awarded, and involved in, who benefits from our national wealth.

A. Delahoy

Silverknowes Gardens

Letter: A fair share for wealth creators

letter (2)

Dear Editor

Government money for investment is raised through taxes of all kinds on the people. Private investment comes from the rich and very well-off.

The biggest investment of all is the labour power supplied by working people every day of the working year, transforming money investments into products.

Both government and private investors, after costing materials and labour, keep the surplus – called ‘profit’.

Government profit should be ploughed back into society in the form of public services. Those who give their labour power – without which there would be no profit – do not receive any of those profits; they of course get wages of varying amounts for a year’s work … as opposed to the ‘efforts’ of the rich who in making one investment telephone call!

Private investors, as ever, look to maximise profit, keeping costs as low as possible, particularly wages and working conditions (zero hours contracts are the modern way): this is where trouble starts.

If wages are restricted by private industry or the government, the ability of the working people to buy what they have produced is cut. This eventually leads to private investors withdrawing and closing down companies – reducing further the ability of people to buy goods.

The situation is made worse if the government – like the present Tory/Lib Dem one – is dominated by and operates in favour of private investors, and not those who produce the wealth in the first place.

A. Delahoy

Silverknowes Gardens