PAKEHA AND MAORI.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 50, 28 August 1911, Page 8

PAKEHA AND MAORI.

to rats Btotwm. Sir,— 'tn your" leading article to-night £6U speak of the unearned increment accrued to Maori landholders, by what is really a combination of European thrift and ■ industry, and _ the keep-the-jjjtiite-hian-off'the-land policy of the Isative Minister, ahd you state that the argument based oh this tact would also apply to the pa-keha runholder and farmer. But will you explain how the same argument can apply to the opposite conditi&ne of things? The Maori has never paid rates or taxes on his land. The pakeha pays both to the last halfpenny or "finds" trouble. As a matter of fact, included in the white man's taxes is ohe, based on the capital value of his land, whether it has reached the productive stage or hot, or has only partially reached it. In practical -working" the effect of this tax is that the white land owtiet is even taxed on his own outlays of capital, long before they have yielded any return.«-I am., LANDLESS. 22nd August, 1911, [Our correspondent's point is plausible but not unanswerable. Ho speaks of the pakehft as paying tatos and taxes "to the last halfpenny," or getting into trouble. If this meant "to the last halfpenny of the increased increment," the point would be fatal to, our contention. But what ths pakeha pays in fates and taxes is really but, a tiny fraction of the added value which his land acquires without any exertions of his own. Men can pay these taxes ahd become rich , nevertheless by the rise of the Unimproved value. Our argument that land owners of both colours profit by the. rise, to which objection had been taken as the peculiar perquisite of tha Maori, is therefore sound. But, we, of Course, concede that the Maori fares the better of the two by reason of the exemption referred to.l