COST OF LIVING

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 81, 2 October 1918, Page 4

COST OF LIVING

. ■ . TO THE BDITOR. Sir,—While the various candidates foi the Wellington .Central seat have aired their views on' the cost of living, not many seem to have touched on the key to the solution of the trouble, and no one of them on the root of the trouble. On a recent visit up the West Coast I had forcibly brought to my notice the way in whichi Under our economic system, land values are forced up. A block of some: 175 acres of .rich dairy: country, •which five years ago "was bought at £35 per acre, had successively changed hands,, until (without.anything being meanwhile added to its productive value) the last, purchaser got-it at £100 .^er acre. While this process is going on. all.'over New Zealand from the North Cape to the Bluff and while tho landowner is permitted t<> appropriate in the shape of land values all the benefits that the community adds in the way of improvements in production, transport, and distribution, can il be wondered that things are inevitably growing worse for the. consumer ? The last owner of this piece, in order to get his money back, has a family of white slaves "share-milking." Wliat a system, or, rather, want of system ! Consider the case of a purchaser from a shop on Lanibton-quay. Every three or five yoars, irrespective .of whether the shopkeeper does a larger trade or not, his rent is raised. He is.selling (if he is a retailor of produce) goods-which are produced on land, the value of which is continually rising. If ho is engaged in sellj ing merchandise, he is the. Victim of ship ping trusts and rings, cotton combines, and monopolies of every sort and description. ' And we wonder that the cost of living is constantly rising and that the efforts of the Arbitration! Court to cope with it are so futile! (The truth is, Sir, the' root evil is 'in the economic system itself—in producing for profit in. stead of for use, and no palliatives can be of any service. Let the, man V who wishes to end one evil, thon, stand out boldly to? such a taxation of communitycreated land values, whether in town or country, as shall return to tho people what they- are now robbed of.—l ami .etc., ■ . - •■ ■■/• ■'.'■•• ■",'' ; 3C ' Ngaio, 28th September. '•, ; y