CORRESPONDENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 150, 28 June 1938, Page 10

CORRESPONDENCE

TAXATION COST i i i (To the Editor.) Sir, —According to the "Evening - Post" of Saturday last, Mr. A. H. Nord--5 rneyer, M.P., speaking at Ashburton, t gave the total cost of the whole scheme i under the Social Security Plan as £17,850,000. He added that the contributions of Is in the £ would pay not quite half of that sum. How is the balance to be made up? Parlia- ■ ment is about to assemble, and it J should be the duty of that body to 1 get a definite answer to this question. • Not till then will the taxpayers of this 3 country know what they are faced 3 with.—l am, etc., VIGILANT. t J ANOTHER GUARANTEE (To the Editor.) Sir, —In your editorial column you have on "several occasions taken the ! Government to task for its evident in--5 tention to debit the taxpayers with t the first year's deficit on dairy produce > and pay out last year's surplus to the • dairy farmers. This kind of legislation • is reminiscent of the previous Govern- ! ment, and it is therefore not surprist ing to see it supported by a prominent > member of the Opposition. Mr. Coates ■ in his speech at Auckland on Friday . last, as reported in your columns, t stated: "To provide greater security ■ he would be prepared to support a . minimum price, the exporter to be : entitled to anything in excess of that." t There can be very little doubt that i the last Government was put out of s office by a large body of electors who, . although anti-Socialist, were of the , opinion that any change must be for i the better. This attitude was due to - the unjust legislation sponsored by the National Government such as rent restriction, artificial exchange rate, mortgage adjustment, compulsory conver- ' sion (term "voluntary"), etc. • With the election a few months off ' and the only alternative to the pre- ' sent Government being the party of • which Mr. Cbates is a prominent mem- ' ber it must be disconcerting to the body ! of electors mentioned to realise that ! they have again to decide which is the ■ least undesirable party to support. It • might increase the prospects of the ! National Party if the leader disso- ■ ciated himself with Mr. Coates's sugL gestion and any other such proposals. • —I am, etc., ; DESPONDENT. 1 """ [ ECONOMIC PLANNING (To the Editor.) I Sir, —In his recent lecture to the Wellington branch of the Economic Society ' of Australia and New Zealand, reported in Thursday's "Post," Professor F. L. Wood stated, apparently with approval, "that the depression of 1931 , caused more and more people to drop ! the classic theory that a natural law would rectify any maladjustment in business conditions if all the ordinary . forces were allowed to operate without interference"; and that "the feel- , ing that the State should take a hand in economic life (and go in for ecoi nomic planning) developed more and more." This statement, I submit, clearly as- : sumes that "all the ordinary forces"— by which, I suppose, he means such economic forces as demand and supply—are "allowed to operate without interference" today. But this is very far from being the case. Under conditions of economic freedom demand and supply would necessarily equate each other, because the supply or production of one class of goods is necessarily in itself a demand for the production or supply of other classes of go'ods. Now, goods in the last analysis can be produced only by labour on and from the land. So that freedom of access to the land is the first essential to economic freedom. Today, however, the most sheltered industry in New Zealand is land monopoly and land gambling. This is why farming does not pay in a favoured land like New Zealand, even with considerable Government subsidies. This is why we found it impossible to settle our returned soldiers on the land under such conditions as would give them a decent chance of making a living. This is why, instead of attracting more and more immigrants, New Zealand is tending to lose population, not only by emigration but also by increasing birth control. This pre-eminently sheltered industry is the root cause of booms and slumps and unemployment and of poverty in the midst of plenty. But this industry is so sacrosanct "that Mr. O. C. Mazengarb seems to regard even "land nationalisation" as a sort of sacrilege. Instead of taking the communitycreated rental value of the land for community purposes, national and local, we allow the economic balance of Nature to be upset by land development and land gambling and by rates and taxes, high exchange rates, and so forth, which strangle production and exchange. And then we—or, rather, the unthinking amongst us—deny that there is a natural order of things that would automatically preserve econonomic equilibrium; denounce "laissez faire," and demand more and more "economic planning," Socialism, and Communism. . The real truth is that m this Nuffield age," as the Archbishop, of Canterbury called it, the above-mentioned interferences with the natural economic balance cause the wealth produced by the masses to pile up in the hands of the few, while many a man at Home toils long hours for 30s a week—l am, 6tC- ' ECONOMIST. June 25. ———