Andrew McKie places the blame for the financial crisis firmly at the door of Gordon Brown and the previous Labour Government ("Cameron needs to stop talking and start doing", The Herald, October 8).

In the US, Mitt Romney says it's all Barack Obama's fault. Can they both be right, or will it eventually turn out to be down to Alex Salmond and John Swinney when the independence debate seriously kicks in?

I was employed in the financial services industry from 1969, when service and integrity were paramount, until taking early retirement through ill health in 1992, at a time when selling was the only thing that mattered. Along the way I saw many colleagues leave the industry, either through disillusionment or burnout but more often both. As I watched the ethos of the job change, I became more and more certain that, because first principles were being dumped, disaster was inevitable. Sadly my fears were correct and I know many others expressed the same misgivings.

The foundations of the meltdown were laid in the 1980s with the financial services big bang, Thatcherism in this country and Reagonomics on the other side of the Pond.

Michael Douglas, as Gordon Gecko in the film Wall Street, said "greed is good". Too many believed him and too many still do.

David C Purdie,

12 Mayburn Vale,

Loanhead, Midlothian.

As by far the greater part of family income in the UK is earned from work and saving, what gives redistributionists and collectivists the right to assume it is theirs for the taking (Letters, October 6 and 8)?

At the start of Lord Beveridge's welfare state in 1948, people on average income paid no income tax. Today, income tax begins at less than half the average income. Why is that fair? Why does a civilised society require that saving income is taxed at all after it has been funded out of already taxed income?

Contrary to the left's fat-cat myth, the great majority of the well-off toiled in their youth at school and university in order to qualify for jobs which are usually severely demanding of time and attention. The rest of us so highly value what they do that we are prepared voluntarily in the market place (eg professional sportsmen and women, lawyers, accountants, even bankers) or compulsorily in the public sphere (eg doctors, dentists, top policemen, teachers and social workers), to reward them generously.

Why should their earnings forever be raided at higher and higher rates to fund those who spurn their opportunities, and just live for the moment? Remember that for 12 years the Labour Government left the top rate of income tax at 40%, only to raise it cynically in the run-up to the last General Election.

Longer lives make collectivist universal provision unsustainable because the costs of moral hazard always multiply.

For example, I never thought I would hear several of my relatively well-heeled friends quite brazenly say they were spending their money or passing it on to the kids, with the intention of leaving the taxpayer to pick up much of their care-home fees.

We should note the words of the French philosopher of law Claude Frederic Bastiat: "The state is that fictitious institution by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else", and remember that the kindest thing we can do for our fellow man is not to make ourselves a burden on him.

Richard Mowbray,

14 Ancaster Drive,

Glasgow.

I appreciated your sensible editorial about universal benefits ("A mature debate on universalism", The Herald, October 6).

It was refreshing at last to have some balance in this vital debate. I'm no Labour supporter, but I believe Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont has been unfairly vilified for opening up the taboo subject of how Scotland should provide and pay for its needy citizens. This core economic question must be at the very heart of the referendum debate.

Sadly, but predictably, the early response from Alex Salmond has been to ritually dismiss and trivialise it. The tough reality is that we can have as many public services as we like, but they will all have to be paid for – either out of taxation or borrowed money, and we have seen how terrifyingly easy it is to run up a national debt.

Politicians like to make promises while staying vague on the means to fulfil them, but we must hold them to account and demand clear answers. Your editorial is a good step in that direction.

David Henderson,

9 Beaufort Road,

Inverness.