RATING REFORM.

Evening Star, Issue 15174, 3 May 1913, Page 5

RATING REFORM.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—Mr W T. Callender is hard to please. If land values alone were taxed, we _ would indeed witness an upheaval in society. Those who are now holding it for increased values would at onoo have to sell, and as few, under such a system, would be anxious to buy, it follows that land values would decrease. But Jet us suppose, for argument's sake, that £2.000,000 could fairly be raised by a tax on land values, or, as I prefer to call it, a small ground rent, payable to the Crown, and that a reduction of a similar amount were made in the taxation at the Custom-house, what would be the result? Beyond a doubt the cost of living would be greatly decreased, since both clothing and foodstuffs would be cheapened. As a consequence of cheap living we would then have cheap labor, since the experience of the whole world proves that where you find cheap food you also find poverty. In India a man may live on a few annas per day, but notice the frequent Indian famines! Take Ireland, if you will, as another illustration. There many of the peasantry live mainly on cheap food—milk, butter, and potatoes, and there you will find poverty rampant. Mr Callender will probably try to show that if a man pays £1 extra in land tax, he will save £2 in Customs duties, but I submit tnat the more vou tax land the cheaper land will become, and so also will food, clothing, and all the necessaries of life, and farm implements and other comat present taxed as they enter the Dominion, and which tax is now passed straight on to the consumer. This means that tip purchasing power of gold will he increased, and that labor as well as the laborer’s food will fall in price, as the actual wages received by a man is not the gold placed in his hands, but the goods that that gold can bo exchanged for. I leave your correspondent Mx Bell to th" tender mercies of Mr Barr, but I would like Mr Callender’s admission that land tp: moans cheap land, cheap food, and cheap labor. At present the working man as a rule seeks little labor and much wages. If he rents a house, it often becomes too much trouble or too much labor for him even to dig up the garden and grow his own potc-toes an<i cabbages. Yot he complains fcoc:j!~e the adjoining land is unoccupied, and nothing is produced n P on a Vacant Section. P.S.—Customs duties aro sometimes imposed for protective purposo.—V.vV May 3.