FOR HIGH LIVING STANDARDS

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 55, 3 September 1945, Page 4

FOR HIGH LIVING STANDARDS

■ Sir, —The Minister of Supply (Mr. Sullivan) was reported to have said in the House a few days ago, in support of the retention of the import control that "It was only by such a policy that the objective of abolishing poverty, fear, and want, and providing full employment and a higher standard of living could be attained." Such a statement flouts the noble principles of individual freedom that have been aspired to in all ages, and again emphatically endorsed in the Atlantic Charter. Neither free trade nor policies of restriction, nor interferences with our money system can guarantee full employment and an equitable distribution of wealth. Free Trade is desirable, first, because it is in full accord with the aspirations of human freedom, and, secondly,, because being in accord with the principle of the division of labour, it will achieve a far greater production of wealth than is possible with restrictive systems. Free Trade can best be compared with the discovery of steam, electricity, and the internal combustion engine, all concerned with production and having no influence on the just distribution of wealth. And neither is it possible for tariffs, import restrictions, or manipulations of the currency to bring about so great a result as witness the vast amount of pre-war unemployment in virtually every country labouring under trade restrictions which merely aggravated the original primary wrong. If the present administration is in earnest in its desire to raise standards of living and to promote *peace and friendship with the rest of the world then our present land system whereby all our progress is absorbed in rent and our Industrie? strangled and thwarted by speculation, must be abolished, along with much of our taxation and our national and local revenues obtained from the only just source, the communal rent of land We are, etc..

THE N.Z. LEAGUE FOR THE TAXATION OF LAND-VALUES (INC.).