A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 'LOST. to the EDITOR.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 27, 31 July 1907, Page 10

A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 'LOST. to the EDITOR.

Sir, — Permit ma to supplement your leader of Monday last. We may Hover liveto see a Government with puch a following as tho Ward Govcrnmunl lias to-day, and now that their land and tariff proposals are unvcilod it is obvious that they fare adopting tho tinkering milky-watery ■mejhods which characterised nearly all Go'vef/}mcn'tß of the past. What, in" the world ; is tho use of shitting taxes from' one • necessity ,to another— from sugar to icandlas, from building material tho tools ot 3TiJ^=atiry lilec obilclroTi * pla-yiiag 1 'with toys? It is a thousand pities "that ■Mr * Seddon did not live foi one moro ecs,sion. H6 distinctly promised -• that he • would go in for big reductions in indirect ■taxation, and make it up by increasing the , land tax. Tho point where the,preßent proposed land tax starts to operate is ridiculously high. Yon sir, propose to reduco it by one-half, which would be a big improvement ; but what is also wanted is a, land value tax without graduation at all. Tho only excuse tho Premier has given for taxing tho tools of industry is that tho revenues must bo got somehow. But a& any taxes must 'eithei fall' on industry or land values, to loave- tl>e latter alono is equivalent lo lpovipg the whole question alone. — I "afti, etc., . E. STEVENSON. Wellington, 26th July.