LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume 65, Issue 99, 17 December 1943, Page 5

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

THE RUSSIAN SYSTEM

Sir —In asking "Wide Awake" to tell me how the Russians deal with the economic differential factor of immense variations in site values, or the social rental value of localities, I have drawn the usual and expected blank. It now devolves upon me to tell your readers just what happens.

"Wide Awake" told us there was no charge for site value. Well, it is obvious that if Smith were given a free site in the central part of Christchurch for a given business, and Jones a site in Leeston for a similar business, Smith, with the vastly greater turnover* at Christchurch on the immensely higher site value, would soon become a multimilliionaire. But that does not happen in Russia, because all surplus funds are forcibly taken on loan or by- taxation, and the only people who are permitted to "live like lords" are the favoured new aristocracy of the bureaucracy. It is just State Capitalism, with the commissars as the New Plutocracy. Terrific taxation is levied on all the necessaries of life, and some workers receive 10 times as much as others, just like the "capitalist countries." In his "Mission to Moscow," Ambassador Joseph Davies tells us that some of the commissars live in great style, with their servants and "dachas" or country houses as well as town houses. Whatever marvels of material advancement they may have achieved, Ogpu-ridden Russia is no model for our proposed New Order.--I am, etc., t. c. McMillan. Matamata.