OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 100, 30 April 1938, Page 26

OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY

The British Commissioners of Inland Rcv.-iue hava. published their annual report says a writer in the "Sunday Expr.s.i." It is a compendious affair of seventy pages, covering all their unpopular activities and summarising the various tax returns.

In the super-tax and sur-tax sections of the report there is a summary of the number of millionaires and multimillionaires.

Here are the figures. In the financial year 1935-3G 85 persons paid income tax on incomes exceeding £100,000 a year, 71 had incomes between £75,000 and £100,000; 178 between £50,000 and £75,000, 526 between £30,000 and £50,000.

Some suggestion of the high proportion of these incomes.which is unearned can be obtained from the figures showing the distribution of estates liable to estate duty.

Estates valued at" over £20,000 each, the big estates, amounted in 1936-37 to £326,800,000, which is 55.21 per cent, of the total value of all estates. Below that the biggest proportion comes in the £1000 to £5000 section, which accounts for 15.02 per cent, of the total. The small estates, below £1000, amounted to only £41,500,000, or 7 per cent, of the total. What is most striking about these figures is the way in which they show how the ownership of the country's wealth has been concentrated in a few hands. The reason for this is fairly obvious. The very rich seldom marry outside their own narrow circle and, as these marriages are not usually prolific, the inheritance of several estates frequently goes to one person. To complete the picture of class incomes, here are figures of the not so wealthy. Out. of an estimated total of 23i million separate incomes, 15,900,000 are below the £150 a year mark. Another 4,000,000 fal\ between £150 and £250, and 2,700,000 between £250 a,nd £500. Similar figures for the United States are even more striking. The United States is the proverbial land of opportunity. Wave upon wave of immigrants have flowed into the country, Irish, Italians, Germans, Poles,

Czechs, all in the hope of making money out of the new land, i

Some, of course, have succeeded in making money. That it is still possible to climb from the bottom of the tree to the"~top is continually being proved. But the net effect has not been, as might have been expected, to bring about a more even distribution of wealth. On the contrary, the disparity between the average rich and the average poor is as great in the United States as anywhere.

Moreover, the size of the country has permitted, even compelled, the growth of enormous combines, which are in a position to pay very large salaries indeed to their higher officials.

Private life in America being considerably less private than it is in England, it is not really surprising that the Government publishes every year a list of the salaries paid to big business men in each financial year. A selection thereof is set out in the pages of "The New Hepublic," which also publishes alongside the average wage in the industry concerned, wherever such figures are available.

Here is a selection from the list, very brief,-but sufficient to bring out the disparities- between. the two sets of figures. Mr. George W. Hill received frbm the American Tobacco Company in 1936 a salary of £49,234. The average weekly wage in the tobacco industry, is given at, 15.86 dollars, or slightly more than £160 per annum. This, remember, is the average, not the minimum wage, and takes into account the more or .less substantial salaries of foremen, etc.

Other high spots are Mr. Walter S. Gifford, of the American Telephone and Telegraph, who gets a little more than £42.000; Mr. H. F. Sinclair, of the Consolidated Oil Corporation, £40 000; Mr. F. B. Davis, of the United Gas Improvement Co., £45,000; Alfred P. Sloan, junior, of General Motors Corporation, £51,000. The, highest average wage quoted is in the printing and publishing industry, with a little less than £4 a week. The lowest is the tobacco industry, already mentioned.