Reader's Letter Of The Day

From today's Evening Standard:

You have recently highlighted the issue of 'modern slavery' but this is only the tip of the iceberg.

In economic and historic terms, a slave owner is usually a landowner who takes the bulk of the value which slaves create, leaving them just enough to live on. In those terms, there are tens of millions of economic slaves in this country - all those whose rent or mortgage bills leaves them just enough to live on.

Although nominally free, if tenants or mortgage borrowers move to a higher wage area to get a better paying job, they will find that the bulk of their extra wages is taken in higher rents or mortgage repayments. So landlords and banks act are scarcely better than slave owners - they contribute nothing to the process of wealth creation but collect a large chunk of it anyway.

Mark Wadsworth
Young People's Party