We can skirt around the causes of knife crime in the UK (Outrage at May’s denial of austerity link to stabbings, 5 March) but we need to look more deeply and recognise it as a symptom of a sick society where the economy drives us all to aspire to a life of excessive material consumption but where a huge proportion of the population are left behind with no expectation that they can live up to the “good life” as depicted by a wealthy elite.

How does a young man feel when he lives in poverty but is drip-fed messages that he should aspire to become rich, drive a Lamborghini and live a life of luxury?

With the massive reduction of standards in state education and with social mobility a thing of the past, we live in an ever more obscenely unequal society where young people see no chance of joining the “dominant culture”. So where do they turn? Youth centres have closed and other public facilities are increasingly becoming something which only the well-off can afford. Street gangs – and thence knife crime – are the last refuge of a disenchanted generation who feel no hope of joining the mainstream and so seek sanctuary among friends on the streets, the only place they feel they belong.

Eileen Peck

Benfleet, Essex

• To end the knife-crime crisis, first call it what it is: a national murder crisis. The government must recognise that to end it quickly will require spending a huge amount of money, and must resolve to borrow what is needed.

Take Bernard Hogan-Howe’s advice to appoint a tsar to lead the end-it-quickly campaign. Announce a knives and guns amnesty with a reward for every weapon handed in. Invite recently retired policemen and women to rejoin the force and reward them for doing so.

Urge headteachers to hold lessons on the crisis. Organise public meetings. Use compulsory purchase orders to buy empty buildings and convert them into youth centres. Invite former youth leaders and volunteers to help run them. That could be a start.

Chris Birch

London

• The increase in the loss of lives through knife crime is truly shocking, as indeed is the government’s lack of any meaningful attempts to tackle it and the prime minister’s persistent ostrich impression regarding the shortage of police officers. What is also shocking however, is how easy it is to obtain weapons. They are readily available on the internet and through auction houses. While kitchen knives are obviously impossible to control, a starting point might be to stop people profiting from knife crime by selling knives on the open market in plain sight.

No amount of checks on the purchaser will stop these weapons being passed on to someone else, so let’s put an end to their sale.

After all, what kind of person is it that wants to own a deadly weapon? They would be harder to obtain and therefore there would be fewer of them on the streets.

Susan Buckley

Horncastle, Lincolnshire

• Saddened and horrified by the never-ending news of senseless stabbings and murders throughout the UK, I cannot help wondering how the fifth wealthiest nation in the world can afford to spend £6.2bn on two aircraft carriers to police the world, but cannot afford to keep its own citizens safe.

Our depleted police force has to be restored to whatever it takes to combat this evil situation.

Bryan Hanson

Blackburn, Lancashire

• Bernard Hogan-Howe (who I trust) says the increase in stabbings is at least in part due to austerity. Theresa May (who I don’t trust) says it isn’t.

Austerity continues to hurt public services, the education of future generations and the NHS, but is not working as the national debt continues to grow. The main problem as far as I can see is the government’s blase attitude towards those companies and individuals who dodge paying their fair taxes.

Jerry Hodgkinson

London