Ian Murray's Laffer curve comments point to ignorance of economics

The National

2 days ago

The Laffer Curve epitomises economists' quest for mathematical and scientific rigour and respect. A lot of economic data is collected and presented in the form of graphs from which relationships between variables may be deduced, but often without proper statistical evaluation of the accuracy or significance of the results. But at least there is data on which the calculations and predictions can be based, however unreliable.
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The Laffer Curve purports to plot tax revenue against rate of taxation. It has only two points, one at either end of the baseline (or x-axis). Arthur Laffer postulated that there would be a line between these extremes, but the shape of it is entirely hypothetical. No data has ever been gathered to establish where intermediate points might lie, because to do so would be highly disruptive of the fiscal management of a country's economy. So the Laffer Curve is a figment of the imagination.
Ian Murray's quoting of it is a worrying indication of a lack of knowledge or understanding of key economic concepts.
Julian Smith
Limekilns
ANENT my recent observations on our failing NHS (Letters, Aug 9), it pains me to point out further inadequacies. In my previous letter I highlighted a case of a friend where a tissue biopsy was taken during an invasive procedure on January 24 but she still hadn't been informed as to whether the pathology was good or bad news.
After great effort and much time spent telephoning hard-to-contact NHS admin staff, she discovered that a pathology report was created on the April 17 yet the correspondence to her on the subject was only generated very recently and was in the post. So my friend is still waiting, six months post-op, to discover whether she has a significant, possibly life-threatening, condition while the tissue sample and the result spent time sitting waiting to be attended to.
In the same vein, another friend who is undergoing chemotherapy for a malignancy had a CT scan three weeks ago to monitor progress but has had her review appointment this week rescheduled because the CT scan has yet to be scrutinised by a specialist radiologist. In an ideal world, the CT could be reported on in real time, but for financial reasons everything is on hold – including the patient's state of mind for weeks until the scan is checked by a radiologist who wasn't present when the CT was taken but who could actually be based in Australia doing part-time NHS work.
As I stated previously, I support the NHS wholeheartedly but it is underfunded, understaffed and stretching to provide a service to a standard it simply cannot achieve. When things are overstretched they break, and that is what is about to happen with our NHS if the basic problems are not dealt with. We deserve and pay for a first-class NHS but we don't get it.
David J Crawford
Glasgow
CLARE Haughey's excellent but chilling account of the very real peril of creeping privatisation of our NHS (Aug 11) ought to make us all sit up and pay attention.
Nothing can be comfortably assumed to be safe. And, on the watch of a soi-disant Labour government? How this ought to sicken us all, the more so when you remember that it was Attlee's post-war Labour administration that brought the NHS into being in the first place. And this precisely because preceding private healthcare simply did not serve people at all.
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Clare names and hopefully shames the beneficiaries of these obscene donations. This is indeed courageous. Good on you, Clare.
I am reminded of two apposite things. Firstly, an acquaintance of mine recently spent some weeks in the USA. He suffered a fall, being knocked down by a cyclist. This required required a hospital visit to outpatients, and 11 stitches to a finger. Relatively minor, you might say, although, of course, unpleasant. For this he received a bill of $650, with a further $60 to be paid for post-treatment care. Luckily for him, his holiday insurance met most, if not all, of this.
Secondly, those with a longer memory may recall studies undertaken by the World Health Organisation on at least two occasions that I recall, where the quality of healthcare received was compared over 39 countries.
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On both occasions, the country offering the best care was France, and number 39 out of 39 was ... yes, you guessed correctly, USA. The UK came in at around half way, at 19.
This being the case, why on earth would we wish to emulate a profit-driven broken system which serves none but the insurance companies and their bloated shareholders?
Brian York
Dumfries