Sir, - Your correspondent Myles Crowe (May 21st) refers to the concept of negative income tax as the brainchild of a Democrat US senator which was "so progressive and enlightened that it will be unacceptable to a thoroughly indoctrinated capitalistic society".
There have been at least four government funded negative tax experiments in the US: the New Jersey Pennsylvania experiment; the Gary, Indiana experiment; the rural experiment in Iowa and North Carolina; and the Seattle Denver income maintenance experiment. National negative income tax schemes were proposed unsuccessfully by Presidents Nixon (1969, the House of Representatives approved it, the Senate did not), Ford and Carter.
The economics Nobelist Milton Friedman writes on the subject of negative income tax with qualified approval in "Chapter XII: The Alleviation of Poverty" of his classic Capitalism and Freedom (1962). It must be said, however, that Friedman's definition of capitalism is not what Mr Crowe seems to have in mind. Nor is it state sponsored fat-cattism, Celtic or otherwise. Rather, I suspect, Friedman shares a dream with Karl Marx: the state ultimately melting away. Serious socialists may find Friedman a man worth reading. - Yours, etc.,
Curraheen,
Tralee,
Co Kerry.