INFLATION AND LAND VALUES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1934, Page 15

INFLATION AND LAND VALUES.

f *r~ f ~tj% r y* f ■; " Bet «s reason together. - Sir Harold Beauchamp,-chairman of directors of the Bank of New Zealand, during the course of. liis annual address to shareholders, the view that alternating booms and slumps were a rhythm of Nature. Editorially, the "Star" offered a-hyild rebuke for this.quaint and queer outlook, and a correspondent in this journal pungeritly pointed out that there was nothing very rhythmical in these movements,. as the charts showed. Personally, though I do not pretend to know anything about Sir Harold's professional arid particular job, I must say that a part of his address read, to me at least,.much like that of an African muinbo-jumbo who harangued his dusky brethren to the effect that the pestilential fever they werfe suffering from was due to the wrath of the god Hoie-in-the-Dayliglit, whereas a degenerate European wpuld certainly have, set them all to work.improving the sanitary conditions of tho kraa,l. I waited for the word of wisdom, and it came from Col. S; J. E. Closey, apostle of the monetary Messiah, Major Douglas, whose views may or litay not be right, for all this , scribe knoweth. Tile faithful one pointed out that; the Bank of England had issued £300,000jp60:.an an inflationary attempt to restore prices. Let us consider this in conjunction with a report in the "Star" very recently, to the efl'cct that there was trempndous speculation in .land values in certain parts of London district) due to the .improvement of roads and transport services, effected in part at least by the use of this credit expansion. The article stated that people who bought land at £30 an acre,.are getting as much as £2000 for it, maijy instances of remarkable speculative, activities being given in support. Methinks this shows that to bring in monetary reform without fii-st adopting the single tax policy of taking for the community the whole of the community-created land values, in the form of the full annual rentals, must prove a dangerous process, inevitably building up a further great load of mortgage indebtedness, and giving to speculators the values which should be used to wipe out that robbery of tho individual of his just enrnings, known as general taxation.. Here in New Zealand a good rise in prices of primary produce would soon be absorbed in land values, and in time the genuine farmer would be no better oft"! If Mr. Albert Russell, lecturer for the Reciprocal Trade Federation, advocated single tax instead of sales tax lie would bo showing a lictter understanding of what is* wrong with the economic position of the export producers, and pointing the way out in a direction .'that would be reducing taxation instead of adding to the burden, and adding to if iua way that will fall heaviest in its incidence on those least able to bear it, the poor people with families.. t. e. McMillan.'