To my surprise, it was reported in the Echo on November 13 that WDDC’s councillors are to consider a motion calling local authorities to support Action Aids Towns Against Tax Dodging.

I suspect they have realised that there is a direct connection between corporate tax avoidance and the fact that councils don’t get enough cash from central government to supply their communities’ essential services.

The great economist John Keynes stated that if investment exceeds saving there will be inflation, and if saving exceeds investment there will be recession.

Keynes was an advocate of providing government economic stimulus at times of recession by investing in the UK’s infrastructure.

A recent programme on Channel 4 TV explained with great clarity how the poor become poorer and the rich become richer as a result of more and more money being saved rather than feeding back into the economy by way of investment into wages and production.

The term ‘saved’ implies beneficent usefulness but is quite the opposite. In today’s world, it means salting cash away in tax haven banks, property, art like Tracy Emin’s used bed, (a bargain at £1.3 million), Greek islands, yachts, etc.

So, the ordinary worker suffers on two fronts; both by the reduction of investment into employment opportunities and also by the way his low wage and resultant poverty is exacerbated by councils now deprived of the means to help him. A two-edged sword. Not to mention the sick, old and frail.

The global economy is now stagnant. Only two major countries have achieved anything.

By using the Keynes remedy of government investment, now quite unnecessarily called ‘quantitative easing’, both the US and Japan have increased their Gross Domestic Products significantly for a few years.

Some inflation of their currencies has only served to make their goods cheaper so helping their cause.

Inflation is only a measure of one country’s currency against that of any other.

Rather than sporadic ventures into Keynesian economics by individual nations, what is needed now is a united global investment into the world’s infrastructure (for example, green energy, health, reducing poverty, education, transport) which would proportion the investment made by each respective government to its own Gross Domestic Product.

This would limit uneven fluctuations in countries’ individual rates of exchange. My tutors always encouraged me to use the acronym KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) when tackling practical problems. Why are we complicating things by not using economists to run the country?

Far better to teach common sense and instead remove politics from all school and university syllabi.

Mike Joslin, Garfield Avenue, Dorchester