MILLIONAIRES AND OTHERS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 7 January 1930, Page 4

MILLIONAIRES AND OTHERS.

Last year the United States Statistics Bureau published figures which showed, among other things, that 290 Americans paid .taxes on incomes in excess of a. million dollars. This statement made good newspaper copy and it was eagerly seized upon by some sections of the Press, but, as the ‘ 'Christian Science Monitor,” one of the bestinformed daily journals in the United States, points out, most newspapers which “played up” the statement regarding .millionaires, ignored the aceainpamying data which showed that less than two and a-half million persons in the United States 'had incomes large enough to require payment of the federal tax. This is an )arresting statement, and the “Monitor” goes on to state further: “This means that of the 120,000,000 fortunate beings .whom Europeans are supposed to lump together as American millionaires, probably more than 110,000,000 are members of families which operate on annual revenues well below 5000 dollars. The tax report reinforces estimates advanced by the Secretary of Labor which indicate that SO per cent, of these (families have only 750 ito 2000 dollars a year. These figures may not be conclusive, but they do lend weight to arguments for a wider distribution of wealth. Growth of the millionaire class is not- of itself an alarming danger. Even the eleven Americans with incomes of more than 5,000,000 dollars ai year, must, of necessity, turn most of their flood of riches back into the channels of productive enterprise. But growth of the 5000 dollars-a-year class is likely to seem much more necessary to all those below that level. Certainly in terms of social welfare and national stability the need for broader dissemination of wealth is clear. President Hoover ha>s said that the' United States is on the way to abolishing poverty. Yet in a vital sense poverty is relative. A millionaire with his mere 50,000 dol-lars-a-year indome may feel poor beside the billionaire. Nothing feeds political unrest like economic inequality. And nowhere are extremes of wealth more out of place than in a democracy, where political equality, is fundamental. In prosperity, when even the have-nots are beginning to have .their mite, content stifles discontent. But when adversity •pinches, the mite is measured beside the million', and even the wildest schemes for splitting up the million get ! a hearing. There is, therefore, all the more need to devise and use every sound economic method of diffusing wealth, not by giving people money, but by helping them to earn it. Profitsharing plans and the wider ownership of stocks are doing something in this (direction, but .more rapid advance- is needed. Such advance is as essential economically as politically. The new school of economies is recognising that wider distribution of wealth is good business because it means a wider market. For instance, the 5,000,000-dollars-a-year man may get along with only five motor cars; a thousand 5000-dollars-a-year men can use 1000 cars. Thus politics and business unite to illustrate again the utilitarian value of Bentham’s (humanitarian demand for( ‘the greatest goo;d of the greatest j number.’ ”