Man-made- Poverty

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 302, 17 September 1936, Page 13

Man-made- Poverty

Si r ,—“Observer's” fatalism and defeatism in face of the problem, of increasing unemployment are neither intelligent nor manly nor loyal to bis Maker. He suggests'that “Vain is the help of man,” and asks, “When will we learn that this problem is past human solution?” The answer is, "Most emphatically, never!’’ For when once man realises what is the root cause of unemployment, his part in the solution of the problem is easy in the extreme. Ilis part is simply to tear down by means of a substantial tax on land values the man-made fences which lock up the land and thus lock out the people from the unlimited bounty given them from ou High. What more could God give to man in the nay of natural res-ources than He has already given us? If any are ragged, 'homelere and starving to-day it is certainly not His fault. It is simply criminal, stupidly criminal, that in the civilised world to-day there is so much unemployment, poverty and suffering; and especially is that so in a young country like New Zealand, with a population of only 1.500.000 on its 66,000,000 acres, simply teeming with natural resources of all kinds. It is sheer blasphemy to attribute to God the blame for the existence of unemployment and kindred evils in New Zealand. Sheer blasphemy, for the matter of that, to blame Heaven for such evils in any part of the civilised world to-day. As the late Sir Basil Blackett, a former director of the Bank of England, tells us on page 22 of his “Planned Money”: “ . . . in Western Europe and North

America the problem of daily subsistence is no longer fundamental. In. actual fact in these countries and potentially in the rest of the world supplies of food, clothing, houseroom sufficient to keep the population alive and even to secure them a moderate standard of comfort, could be provided without calling for more than a few weeks’ work a year from each member of the community. ...” _ . , Well n*y Professor Soddy, of Oxford University, declare, in his “Money Versus Man,” that the poverty from which the world is suffering to-day is “an artificial poverty (a man-made poverty), which it is becoming increasingly dangerous to enforce.” This man-made, man-enforced poverty, man can surely unmake. If not, why not? —I am, etc., > Wellington, September 16.