TAXATION EVIL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 221, 19 September 1938, Page 10

TAXATION EVIL.

THE PUBLIC POCKET.

PASSING ON THE COST.

MR. F. GOLDBERG'S VTEW.

Pointing to increasing taxation as the most disturbing political development of the past twenty years, Mr. Frank Goldberg, who arrived by the Monterey this morning on a visit to Xew Zealand, eaid that it was a characteristic of practically all countries. At the bottom of it was loose thinking. It was felt in some cases that the business man "squealed'' only because he was interested in "saving his own skin." To that the business man rejoined that he didn't care what taxation was put upon him. He was only a tax-collector. Business was only the conduit through i which- taxes flowed to the Government.

"As one authority put it. 'At each worker's bench there sits an invisible competitor who does not produce, but who accompanies the real worker to the cashier's window each week and demands and gets a wage envelope half or equal the size of that of the real worker. He is just as definitely on the pay roll. Sickness, reduced sales, strikes, nothing worries him or prevents hifti from appearing regularly at the pay window. This is what should make the people restless.'

"Money cannot be conjured out of the air; nor does it grow on trees. <*It has to be found'by coma practical means, and the only way to get it is by taking it out of your pocket or mine, eo long as we have any left to take.

"People in Australia are always groaning and grumbling—as people the world* over are—because of the weight of taxation. Yet there, roughly, a man earning £600 a year pays 14d income t tax on each"£l. In New Zealand'a; man earning £600 a year pay* 25d in the £1. That is one simple instance of how money must be got, and how expensive it can be to dabble with theories, which the ordinary practical man, in the hard light of day, knows to •be economically unsound.*