LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Franklin Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 45, 22 April 1942, Page 3

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Labour v. capital false war

RELATION TO INCIDENCE OF RATING

Sir, —Any person who is honest, has no “vested rights in public wrongs’’ at stake, and understands rating questions, must approve of Mr. G. T. Earvin's contention that owners of property should ndt he penalised by being rated on every stick and brick of improvements they effect. To put a long story into a sentence, 1 allirm, without fear of contradiction, that the annual values and capital values systems of rating are both forms of legalised robbery, indefensible on moral or scientilic grounds, and quite unnecessary financially. The unimproved values system is the sole scientific, morally right, and equitable system extant. Most of the boroughs rate on this basis now, and it should be made mandatory for the Dominion, as Seddon sought to do in bis bill of 1901, but was defeated by four alleged Liberals ratting on him. But the people of Pukekohe have the matter in their own hands, irrespective of what the majority on the council may think or desire. All that is necessary is for a petition, signed by not less than 15 per cent of the ratepayers, to he presented to the Mayor, requesting that a poll for unimproved values rating he taken, and a pol U-must then he taken within so many days, as fixed by Statute. The Pukekohe Borough Council circularised local bodies with a suggestion regarding civil and military pay which it thinks would eliminate the Labour v. Capital war. The scheme raises far more problems than it solves, and does not go to the root of the trouble. The war between Labour and Capital, so-called, is a spurious one, and it arises from the fact that there is a third party robbing both, and setting each at the others throats. The following is a quotation from a memorandum prepared by Edward Tregear, who was secretary for the Labour Department when Seddon was Premier, and the word "rent” he uses refers fo social rent; that is to say, to site value, and not to the rent of buildings:

“The fact is that there is a third hand in the game, besides the employer and employee, and it is this third man, the non-producing ground landlord of city and suburban property, who alone will rise a winner in the end .... The chief devourer of the wages of the worker and of the profits of the employer is excessive rent . . .

a greedy, rack-renting system, which transfers gradually almost the whole earnings of the industrial and commercial classes into the pockets of the non-producer is indefensible. It partakes of three characters: it is unauthorised taxation by private persons, it is tribute to a conqueror, and ransome of a captive.” The above condemnation of the private, though perfectly legal, receipt of the communitycreated value, said to “attach” to land, is fully justified, for the system is the modern form of slavery. For the site value, a purely community product, the holder of the title to the site gives the user of the site nothing whatever that he has produced in return, whereas, were all the site value collected by the local bodies, no rates would he needed on buildings, and some could easily be passed on to the State in relief of taxation. It is this bedrock robbery that is the bottom cause of the Labour v. Capital war. That its proper, scientific, and morally just handling is the solution may he gathered from what happens even when a small-scale attempt to do something in that direction is made. For a late illustration, ■ hut one among many others, let us take the recent poll in Hawke’s Bay County, where U.V. rating was carried by a substantial majority. Owners of freezing works and other large concerns that, are commonly regarded by the horny-handed sons of foil as being very “capitalistic” in the odious sense of the term, worked hand in hand with the owners of cottages and small farms to get U.V. rating carried at the poll. Labour and Capital in such cases are able to see that their interests are one, and that the social rent parasitism is their common enemy. If the Pukekohe Borough Goqncil is really desirous of abolishing, or even alleviating, the friction between employed and employers, let it help to get U.V. rating carried in Pukekohe, and so put itself on side. But that will be only a partial measure, and not enough. The council will only be allowed to collect on the U.V. basis the equivalent of the sum 2d in the £ on the capital values would bring in. It should next move for an amendment to the Rating Act, permitting local bodies to collect the full annual site value, instead of merely a portion thereof. Then society would get its own social rent wages in full, and private persons woud still have the rent of their buildings for themselves, without any deduction for rates on improvements. The council's intention is of the best, but its proposed method would usher in a totalitarian regime in the end. Let it adopt the only method which could possibly achieve its worthy objective.—l am, etc., t. e. mcmillan. Matamata.