I think most civilised teachers and parents know that corporal punishment doesn’t work and just breeds another generation of parents who think it’s OK to beat their kids. And capital punishment has never done much for the murder rate in the US. In both cases, it makes those dishing it out feel like they’re in charge and doing something. Increasing interest rates to ‘stop’ inflation is just as brutal in its own way. ‘Reducing demand, squeezing profits and decreasing employment’ to ‘take the heat out of the economy’ doles out plenty of human misery, and rarely to those doling it out. How is it going to bring down food and fuel prices? It’s not, unless we go back to Scrooge’s Christmas Carol solution of ‘reducing the surplus population’. In the words of someone wiser still than me, there has to be a better way.
“Why most won’t need to worry about IHT on pensions”
Many a government has made the point that only a minority will be affected by this or that tax change or tinker. It is, however, both perception and aspiration which are important, and they are what makes IHT the ‘most hated’ of all taxes – along with all the others, of course.
