Your say: week beginning February 16

Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.

Monday February 16

Rethinking inflation control

“Using interest rates as a means of controlling inflation seems to me to be a very blunt instrument, favouring one part of society while being very hard on the younger generation. Is there not a better way? Why not increase tax rates? Those on the higher incomes who are currently spending, causing inflation to rise, will have their spending curbed and the younger generation will have a little better chance to get established in life.”

Don Perkins

A warning about whooping cough

“I had whooping cough in my thirties. I thought I was going to die – and at times wished I could. Unbearable coughing, broken ribs, muscular agony, no sleep, breathlessness, and vomiting at the end of a coughing fit just when I thought I’d never inhale again. When I realised what I had it was too late for antibiotics. Recovery took a full six months. Initially I thought it was a bad cold so, unknowingly, I travelled by plane while I was highly contagious. I worry what harm that may have caused. Please, please if you can, get vaccinated, and save yourself and others from experiencing what I did.”

Kim Ter-Horst

Renters continue to pay the price

“As a colleague of mine once said: ‘You rarely increase the supply of anything by taxing it more heavily’. The Hawke Keating government quickly reversed moves to curb tax benefits for landlords because of rent rises. When New Zealand curbed tax benefits for landlords, demand for investment loans fell and rents went up. So, theory and admittedly imperfect evidence coincide. The conclusion is that reducing capital gains tax benefits to help home-buyers and the budget should be accompanied by support for renters.”

Graham Partington