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Trauma

War & peace

4 November 2024

2 min read

Hospitals are home to the truth of war

Remembering what war really is.

Simon Cansdale

Simon is a vicar in Winchester, Hampshire.

A black and white photo shows solider patients and nurses in a hospital.

Christmas in a German military hospital, Word War One.

Aussie~mobs, public domain, via Wikimedia.

I’ve been re-reading Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front in the run-up to Remembrance Day. Remarque, born in Westphalia in 1898, uses his own experiences of the horrors of the Western Front to paint a gut-wrenching portrait of its futility and suffering, seen through the eyes of 20-year-old Paul Baum.

It had been towards the end of this First World War that Hiram Johnson, Republican Senator of California, observed that ‘the first casualty when war comes is truth.’ This is precisely Paul’s experience.

The newspapers delivered to the soldiers at the Front are hopelessly, naively, offensively optimistic. They present a painfully, laughably discordant tissue of lies that deny the most basic truths of daily experience. When Paul goes home on leave, truth is even harder to find. His remote father only wants to hear tales of glory and courage and well-fed soldiers. His blabbering former teachers - the very ones who had cajoled his whole class to sign up - are patronising, ignorant and opinionated on the best route to victory. They literally have no idea, and worse, they don’t want to know.

It’s only when he’s taken to a Catholic Hospital after an injury that Paul stumbles on an agonising truth -

‘A hospital alone shows what war is.’

Paul’s vivid description of life on the wards backs this up. He witnesses the unceasing production line of shattered bodies tumbling into every available space. He’s warned against ‘The Dying Room’ which is conveniently, practically, located next to the mortuary. He catalogues the surrounding wards - ‘abdominal and spinal cases, head wounds, double amputations, jaw wounds, gas cases, nose, ear and neck wounds … the blind … lung wounds, pelvis wounds, wounds in the testicles …’ He’s grateful for the gentle, joyful kindness of Sister Libertine, ‘who spreads good cheer through the whole wing.’

This hospital is more eloquent on the theme of the futility of the fighting than any newspaper article or speech, censored or otherwise.

For much of my adult life grainy videos of precision-guided bombs and leaders pounding their fist in defiant rhetoric have been the go-to guides to tell us the truth about modern warfare. I trust these sources less than ever, as I recall my instinctive respect for the ambulance drivers, nurses and doctors on the front-line - wherever it may be - marvelling at their courage and truth-telling and even-handed humanity.

Their voices are shamefully drowned out in the world’s conflict zones, dwarfed by propaganda as insulting and truth-lite as the newspapers that doubled as toilet paper for both sides on the Western Front. And I cringe at the thought of what Paul and his young comrades would’ve made of hospitals - those oases of truth - becoming the targets of today’s bombs, missiles and drone strikes.

We, rightly, remember the First World War as the very epitome of futility - Paul and his generation saw this truth far more clearly than we do. But let’s not congratulate ourselves, as we prepare for Acts of Remembrance in 2024, on having made any real progress in the last 100 years - hospitals across the globe’s conflict zones still tell us what war really is, if only we could hear, if only we would listen.

Explainer

Comment

Economics

29 October 2024

6 min read

How to tax ethically to avoid a two-tier society

From income tax to property and inheritance taxes, which is fairer?

Laurence Fletcher

Laurence is a journalist at the Financial Times.

Sarah Agnew on Unsplash.

Few doubt that Chancellor Rachel Reeves will be putting up taxes when she presents her first Budget on October 30th.

The political narrative of recent months has very much been of an alleged fiscal “black hole” of £22bn - or is it £40bn? - that somehow needs to be filled.

While the size of the shortfall and the identity of those responsible are both hotly disputed, and despite a lack of detail from the Treasury about what it actually consists of, the questions now being asked are not whether taxes will rise but which ones and by how much.

Months of speculation have focused on employer National Insurance, capital gains tax and freezing income tax thresholds as areas that Reeves could look to for the additional revenue.

But beyond the immediate issue of raising enough revenue to make good any shortfall, lies a deeper, trickier question about the way in which taxes should be levied for the good of society. If a government is to force people and companies to hand over their money, then what is the most ethical way to do this? Who should pay and who shouldn’t? How can tax be used to reduce inequality and build a better society?

Answering such questions is, of course, far from straightforward, because there are plenty of other factors in play.

For instance, some taxes are surely levied because they are simpler to collect. Take income tax - an unpopular measure introduced in 1799, then abolished before being reintroduced as a supposed temporary measure. It could certainly be argued that taxing people’s income - their attempt to get on in life and improve their lot in life - is less “fair” than taxing wealth that has been accumulated by someone’s ancestors years ago. Working hard and earning income is often surely a way of breaking down class divisions. But income tax - contributing 28 per cent of UK government tax take in 2023-24, according to The Institute for Fiscal Studies - has the advantage that it is relatively difficult for the average worker at a UK company to avoid it. Ease of levying it is surely a driver.

Equally, some taxes that might seem “fairer” have deliberately not been levied because of the difficulty in collecting them, and/or because to try to do so could be counterproductive.

A wealth tax, for instance, would be “economically damaging”, according to one of the UK’s highest profile tax experts Dan Neidle.

Or take the politically contentious issue of non-doms, a colonial era tax break allowing rich foreigners to avoid UK tax on overseas income. It would be fairer, the argument goes, to tax them on the whole of their income. If they are going to be resident in the UK, then surely they should be taxed like a UK resident whose home is here?

Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt abolished this regime earlier this year but left a number of concessions that the incoming Labour government pledged to abolish. But non-doms are tax-sensitive and highly mobile, and a number of jurisdictions compete to attract them. Many are entrepreneurs and wealth creators that many countries need. Reports have suggested a clampdown could raise no money or even cost money and could drive people away.

“Housing is being treated as a commodity. The problem is, it’s not; it’s not just an asset. It has utility value and a communal and quasi-spiritual value, enabling people to feel rooted.”

Paul Williams

So, what can be done to use tax in an ethical way? Paul Williams, research professor of marketplace theology and leadership at Regent College, Vancouver and chief executive of the Bible Society, takes a Biblical perspective that he believes offers some solutions.

He takes as his starting point a story from the gospel of Matthew, where Jesus is asked whether people should pay taxes to Caesar. The question is a trap - either Jesus gives his backing to taxation that is highly unpopular with the Jewish people, or he rejects the tax in an act of rebellion against the Romans.

Jesus replies that they should “pay to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, and pay to God what belongs to God.” We are to pay our taxes to those in authority, but we are also to honour God.

While Williams believes that too much emphasis is placed on the Budget and political parties’ promises to be able to fix everything, and that a more radical rethink of our economy is required, he also sees room for positive tweaks to the current system.

One key area is the property market, the manifestation of so much inequality in society, with some people owning multiple houses while others cannot afford to buy one.

Williams argues that the ready availability of debt finance has allowed those who already hold assets to easily acquire properties, turning real estate into an investable asset class to the detriment of many of the poorer in society.

“The reason there’s so many homeless people and empty houses is due to debt finance. It makes it easy for a relatively small proportion of the population to acquire a large percentage of the assets.

“The system has allowed a structure in which a small advantage in the beginning can lead to big, big differences over time.”

Williams highlights parts of Devon and Cornwall that have been, he says, “completely ruined” by wealthy people from elsewhere buying second homes, leaving property “out of reach of anyone who lives and works there”.

Nevertheless, he believes taxation can be used in this area to help level the playing field.

He proposes a “pretty punitive” marginal rate of tax on ownership of more than one home. (Stamp duty only partly does the job and is a blunt instrument also affecting people moving homes, thereby makes mobility expensive).

“You want to disincentivise the way the housing market is used for speculation,” he said.

“Housing is being treated as a commodity. The problem is, it’s not; it’s not just an asset. It has utility value and a communal and quasi-spiritual value, enabling people to feel rooted.”

Buy-to-lets, meanwhile, are better than having empty second or third homes, but “wouldn’t it be better if occupiers could buy that house?” he adds.

Meanwhile, research by the Financial Times recently found a huge wealth gap between the average millennial and the top 10 per cent of millennials, who are benefiting from family wealth to accumulate substantial housing assets.

So, would increasing the rate of inheritance tax - one of the most hated of taxes - and/or lowering the threshold also help reduce some of this inequality? After all, how is it fair that one child in the UK is born to inherit large property wealth while another is born to inherit little or nothing? Or, even worse, that second child will only ever be able to afford to be the tenant of the first, paying them rent for the rest of their lives?

Williams is not a fan of inheritance tax per se, arguing that it is “not part of the package” in a Biblical image of a flourishing economy.

But he adds an important caveat: “the playing field is not level.

“There might be circumstances to impose a one-off tax on the very wealthy… if you want a transition to a more equitable society.”

Such steps are not easy to take. It is, he admits, probably “career suicide” for a politician to adopt such views. But if we are to take steps towards a fairer way of life, and avoid a two-tier society in decades to come, then maybe the conversation needs to shift this way. Perhaps the Budget could be the time to start.