John Richardson writes: Re. “Won’t be fooled again” (yesterday). Keith Binns is certainly “on the money” when it comes to fingering greed as a powerful driver of inequality the world over (“trickle-down greed”, yesterday).
However, as Oxfam highlighted in its report released on Monday to mark the meeting of business leaders in Davos (“Blaming only globalisation for inequality is misguided”), “greed” by itself is not the problem, but rather the corruption that the super-rich engineer to further serve their interests and the corruption of politicians who slavishly enable that to happen.

In a mind-boggling statistic, Oxfam confirmed that eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.

While our nation gnashes its teeth over the sins of Sussan Ley, Julie Bishop and a long list of the usual suspects, anyone who thinks that empty platitudes from the likes of Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten promising reform and a more equitable society in the face of the Oxfam reality is surely dreaming.

Jock Webb writes: Exactly correspondents Binns, Tinson and Clarke. Bernard loses the plot once in a while I think and economists never had it. It is economists and their strange world that got us into this mess.