THE NATIONAL CREDIT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22166, 20 July 1935, Page 17

THE NATIONAL CREDIT

Sir, —The N.Z. Welfare League, writing under the above heading, states: "The nation's wealth is the aggregate wealth of the individual citizens." There is room for a difference of opinion here. I consider that the league writer is correct in stating that State enterprises (such as the railways) are national wealth, but there is a vital difference between these public utilities and private wealth. Every man. woman and child in this Dominion, who is a member of this nation, has an equal ownership right in all national services. A swagman on the road has an equal ownership right in the New Zealand railways with the richest man in the land. It is true that the swagman may not hare the purchasing power to use the railways, but many owners of cars are in the same fix, not being able to pay running costs, so the cars stop in their garages. But the "aggregate wealth of individual citizens" is owned in varying degrees by those citizens, varying, indeed, from the child's toy to the great material wealth possessed by the shareholders of some of our most important limited liability companies. Each person's share in the ownership of public wealth is his or her stake "in" the country, and the wealth privately owned is the stake "within" the country; there is a difference. The league is right in stating that our national credit depends upon the taxable capacity of the citizens, but it may be as well to stress the point that this capacity would very quickly be exhausted by taxation if the taxes took too heavy a toll on the continuing production, in which case much of our wealth would corrode and crumble away, as happened owing to the overload of tax-gathering bureaucracy, with the inevitable concomitants of "bread and games," in ancient Rome. While our concrete national assets might be of some slight, but doubtful, use to internal creditors, our overseas creditors do not want them, but look for payment of debt services from the continuing export, production. I am not accusing the i league of overlooking this fact, hut think the emphasis pertinent. WJiat I object to is the pernicious Socialistic, and Communistic teaching that the wealth of private individuals is "the nation's wealth," for it is not so, and is not made so by the legal circumstance that much of it is regularly and communistically confiscated by taxation. T. E. McMillan. Matamata.