LAND, OR TEA AND SUGAR?

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 72, 26 March 1931, Page 6

LAND, OR TEA AND SUGAR?

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—While apparently approving Sir Francis Bell's suggestion of a tax on (ca and sugar in place of the proposed wages cuts, your correspondent, Mr. T. 0. Tiemayne, declares that "New Zealand will' ..become, prosperous again only when the' lietitioiis price 'of"land is forced down to a level at:-.which butter and wool may be produced' at a prolit." Surely that points to [he need for an increased tax on land value's, "not for a tax on tea aud; sugar. .

The Prime .Minister's statement (referred to by another ■'Post correspondent)' that one of the principal causes of this year's deficit is the failure of the railways to pay interest on capi-. lal also points to the need for further taxation .of land values, instead of attacks on the wages of railwayman and other Public servants. The railways fail to pay interest on their capital cost mainly because' a capital part of their earnings— namely, the'increased land values made by the railways—is-allowed'to go into private bauds, instead of being taxed into the public coffers. This is also a principal cause of "the fictitious price of land" spoken of by Mr. Trcmayue. That fictitious price of land, besides rendering it difficult, if not impossible, to produce butter, cheese, wheat, meat, wool, etc., at a profit, aud besides putting a well-nigh insuperable bar on closer laud settlement, results in hundreds of thousands of acres being held idle alongside our railway lines; whereas a sufficient tax on land values ■would force this idle land into use, thus providing work for idle hands and also providing freight for our much-abused railways. . \ Hat tax of Id in (he XI on the unimproved value of the land would produce well-in'-h Ihe whole'of the £ \.r,l)D,M)!> tlwl Mr. Forbes iciiuires. lint then, I suppose, it would be far 100 much to >\\pect of any Xew Zealand Government that it should take public earnings—the commun-ity-created land values—for public purposes, instead of getting the money from -individual?, by •'salary cuts and otherwise of their individual, earnings. \Lveri tlie Loader of the Labour 'Party, Mr. 11. X Holland,.'. declares ".that "the. ideal tax is the. income tax!"—l am, etc.,

SALARY CUT