Grey River Argus and Blackball News WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 1922. OUR SPECULATIVE RISE IN PROPERTY VALUES.

Grey River Argus, 12 July 1922, Page 4

Grey River Argus and Blackball News

WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 1922. OUR SPECULATIVE RISE IN PROPERTY VALUES.

- it-.d every rnoi ning in Gr. .nuth R • -x, H -lu. uu, Dc-bso.i, VVallscnd, Taylui/ille, hftalrtc Bl.c l .-all. Nelson Creek. Brunner, Te kotomanu, Poerua, Inchbonnie. Patara, Rv •; Kaunata,-Kotuku- Moana, Aratika, Bunanga. DunoUie. Cobden, Baxter s, Kokiri, Ahaura, Ikamatua, Stu!wa.ter, Waiuta, Reefton, Ross, Ruatapua, Manama, Bari Hart Waiho Gorge, Weheka, Rewanui, Otira, Irumgahua Junction. Westport. Waimangaroa. Denniston. Granity. Millerton. Nfiakawau. Hectoc a Seddou villi, Cape Foul wind, and Karam tz

It is often difficult to understand the ulterior objects of those who, with a capitalistic outlook, advocate certain measures in the name of prosperity. Profits for the few, from the toil of the many, are apparently their highest conception of a community’s well-be-ing. The completion of the overland railway has been advocated in different quarters from different motives. One advocate, the morning paper at Westport, outlines its outlook in a commentary it makes on a remark we passed the other day. We said that another Canterbury Progress League delegation was shortly visiting the Coast, and that Canterbury capitalists were looking forward to reaping big profits shortly from this locality. Our contemporary opined that the capitalists of Canterbury “should stay at homo and buy up property in Christchurch, for there is going to be a great leaping up of values in property there when Christchurch gets linked up with the great mineral, timber and pastoral wealth of the West Coast.” "We have not the slightest doubt that remark indicates with , precision the idea in the minds of the men identified with the Canterbury Progress League, who appear to think, with the Westport paper, that “the best Wellington boom will be a mere circumstance to that which Christchurch is

to experience.” The question arises as to whether, for ‘the mass of the people, this so-called prosperity is worth anything. A ‘ ‘ great leaping up of values in property!” Where is the prosperity in that? Why should the gain go to the holders of property? The people who stay at home and buy up land? This is a striking confession, naive but candid, of what the critics of Labour mean by prosperity. Is it not a fact painfully obvious today that the wholesale “leaping up” —in other words, the arbitrary forcing up—of property values, especially land values, has been the outstanding cause of much present economic stringency? The “leaping up” was a grab only the system camouflaged it, We are

told by economists with a brief for the existing system, including some of our W.E.A. tutors, that slumps are inevitable. Their recurrence is said to be a process inherent in the nature of men and things. But can we not see in this forecast of a leaping up of property values the indicator of an inevitable reaction later? The truth is therefore clear that it is to the nature of modern capitalism alone are due the alternations of good and bad times. Evidently it is the monopolists of property who will secure the benefits of the new railway and the trade it creates, if they can exact the chief gains for themselves from others Without Labour, property will not produce in the future any more than it now does. What gain to a community can come from a rise in land values? The few will merely take a larger toll from production. The majority will *be absolutely no better off, especially when we haw-e employers and a court that fix the worker’s share at what he can just live upon. The vast value of property in London does not reduce the vaster extent of abject poverty. We see therefore in our own locality the prospective gains from greater production being already capitalised in advance by the monopolists of property. We see the speculative advance in land values setting, in again. Those who want facilties to produce or live or do business must pay so much the more for them. It is the same thing as the processes variously called overproduction or under-consumption. The property buyers and venders will hoist values from sale to sale until they get as relatively and disproportionately high as the prices paid for laud for soldiers. Then will come the unavoidable reaction from this artificial “leaping up” —as the Westport p:.j calls the process—and some who have “bitten off more than they can chew will go bankrupt, whilst the others who have been selling or rack-renting to their own advantage will extend their respective holdings in preparation for the next “boom.” And on the Coast there are many property-owners and others expecting a similar turn of events, hoping to do well for themselves out of it, and saying they have at heart only the general prosperity. Nobody can deny, of course, that the opening of the line in question is a beneficial thing in itself, destined to increase actual production and to facilitate distribution, but the few stand to gain at the expense of the many. To whomsoever the means of production belong, to him belong the fruits of production! That is the underlying principle of our economic system, and to talk of true prosperity for the great majority under such a system is to ignore the teaching of history and experience alike. When the benefits of greater production are conserved for all, when monopoly and the evil of fictitious values go, then and then only will the masses be able to look ahead hopefully for prosperity.