The Guardian Printed at Leeston, Canterbury, New Zealand, on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1927. NOTES AND COMMENTS INCOMES AND MOTOR CARS.

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XLVI, Issue 3168, 15 November 1927, Page 4

The Guardian Printed at Leeston, Canterbury, New Zealand, on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1927. NOTES AND COMMENTS INCOMES AND MOTOR CARS.

Judge Crawford's declaration, that no person with an income of less than £1500 a year is justified in owning a motor car, has been widely discussed in England. "The whole tendency of modem, life is to make it both easier and more necessary to develop the motor car habit," the Daily News remarked. "At present it is the £400 a year or the £500 a year man who, generally speaking, represents in this country the lowest economic grade in the great world of motor car owners. It is likely that he finds the 'luxury' something of a tax on his resources." The Evening Standard gives the case of a man who has £1500 a year. It says:—"The £400 or £500 a year man can, if his other wants are simple, if he does without expensive service, housing, schooling, and so forth, afford somehow this one extravagance. But a man of good position, on an earned £1500 a year, without any kind of private resources, is really a vexy poor man indeed. He has reached the point | where taxation begins to become really heavy; he has social obligations to meet; if he has children, he is sup-, posed to send them to good (or, at any rate, expensive) schools; he must dress reasonably well; his wife will probably consider it her duty to dress | more than reasonably well; his house i and its equipment must be of a certain ! standard. He is the man who can af- : ford no luxury. He is the man who is forced habitually -to live up to his income, and must consider himself lucky if he is not sometimes impelled beyond it. He has no friends in any party. Socialists regard him as a bourgeois and even v plutocrat; Conservatives regard him as a man whose vote does not count, and who will be bound to. vote Conservative any way. It is hardly worth while being a £1500 a year man. And yet the £1500 a year men constitute the chief intellectual vigour .of the nation."