The Dominion MONDAY, MARCH 16, 1931. BANKRUPT LABOUR LEADERSHIP

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 145, 16 March 1931, Page 8

The Dominion MONDAY, MARCH 16, 1931. BANKRUPT LABOUR LEADERSHIP

In contradistinction to the attitude of the Reform Opposition in the present difficult economic situation, the Labour Party seems to have adopted the working motto of “hindering rather than helping. So far Mr. Holland and his henchmen have not produced a single constructive or practicable idea to assist in the solution of existing problems. Instead their policy seems to be, both inside Parliament and out, one of obstruction and threats. How a Party which aspires to become the Government of blew Zealand can be content to cut so irresponsible and useless a figure is hard to understand. Those who have hopefully awaited the pronouncements of the Labour leaders as to their policy for meeting the economic position must by now be sorely disillusioned. Por there is no policy, no gleam of light, no trace of constructive thinking, in all the verbal torrent unloosed since Mr. Holland took the platform in the Town Hall on Wednesday evening. “The sheep look up but Mr. Holland certainly admits that the Budget should be balanced but he discounts this sound policy by proposing that the anticipatec deficit be met out of increased income tax and death-duties. 1. would be interesting to have details of the Labour Leader sproposa s to draw 44 millions from these sources. Even if for a wild momeiu 'it be supposed that it is possible, what would be the practical effect. More than one Socialist prophet, including two such opposites as Mr. Philip Snowden arid Sir Oswald Mosley, could, be called to witness that the effect of such heavy taxation would be to prevent the accumulation of capital, to stifle enterprise and expansion, td intensify depression, and to add largely to unemployment, as the Labour Party’s aim to maintain wages at artificially high levels is already doing. But Mr. Holland’s idea of finding 4| millions from income tax and death duties is an unsubstantial dream which cannot be realised. The yield from death duties is, of course, subject to the number of wealthy persons dying and it is unlikely that even Socialists will obligingly consent to premature extinction, however dire the budgetary emergency. Another bar to the realisation of increased duties is the shrunken value of all estates, whether represented by cattle, sheep and land or by - city property, stocks and shares. Wealth of' all kinds has already suffered a drastic cut in value. A similar revenue disappointment would certainly be the result of a heavy surtax on incomes sufficient to give the yield Mr. Holland imagines can be obtained. In the first place a great many individuals and firms are at present making no profits, but losses. It is no use doubling the tax on nothing because the result remains the same. Even where taxable incomes have not been reduced to a minus quantity, they will be found almost universally to have diminished considerably. In short, Mr. Holland in his blissful ignorance of actual financial conditions commends the Treasury to lean on bruised or broken reeds. New Zealand may consider herself fortunate at the present juncture that her affairs do not rest in the hands of such highly imaginative and amateur financiers as Messrs. Holland, Langstone and company. The workers, however, are most unfortunate in that they have to look to these same unpractical people as their professed leaders. As a matter of sober fact, the Labour Party is blinding ' itself to the facts in the matter of wages as well as of taxation. It knows that, the national income has been drastically cut and that there is less available for labour as for everyone else but it continues to demand that the old high rates of wages be paid. The Labour Party should face up to this it prefers higher wages, fewer jobs and more unemployed; or lower wages, more jobs and fewer unemployed? There is the choice and no amount of strutting on platforms, and threats and recriminations, can disguise it. Nor, so far as Parliament is concerned, will mere obstruction achieve anything. If Mr. Holland and his colleagues have nothing better than this to offer, they stand exposed as barren of ideas and politically bankrupt.