Comments on Rybczynski

Let me start my discussion by making two subsidiary points. First, I would turn round what Mr Rybczynski says about large interregional transfers having made little difference to growth rates; it was because the structurally-determined components of the growth-rates already differed that the transfers were required, and one could argue that in relation to their size they were pretty effective. Second, I do think Mr Rybczynski is technically wrong in regarding the ‘up to 1 per cent of the yield of a uniform VAT’ as not an ‘own resource’, but this is metaphysics!