THE LEVY ON WEALTH.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 300, 7 December 1922, Page 2

THE LEVY ON WEALTH.

HOW IT WOULD WORK

Labour’s ideal of a levy on wealth was very neatly held up to ridicule by the Government candidate for Auckland East, Air. Alackonzie, in his speech on Tuesday evening. Mi\ Holland ,lie said, had asserted that the private wealth of New Zealand had increased from £280,000,000 in 1914 to >5560,000,000, and that in those figures lay a large reservoir of “ill-gotten gains.” The Labour leader contended that the people holding this money should hand it, in £10,000,000 lots, back to the Government. To illustrate where that wealth was lying, Mackenzie said he would take the suppositious case of an elector in Auckland east. “Say you had bought a. house in 1914 for £700,” he said. “You have kept it in order, and have a nice garden and so on. and to-day the property is probably worth £l2OO. You have got, thereore, by some means or other—alleged by some people to have been improper—an increase of £5OO in your wealth. Under a Labour Government you would be asked to hand that amount back to it in hppropriato instalments. Presumably then • you would be at liberty to regard the house as once more worth £7OO. Your instalment of the levy -in the first year you would probably meet from your salary or wages, in the second year you might meet it from your savings, but in the third year you would probably be under the necessity of hawking around your carpets, pictures etc., to raise the necessary sum.” (Laughter.) “Fortunately, the third year would be election year.” added the candidate, “and you could turn out these Utopian adventurers into realms from which they would never return.” This sally evoked hearty laughter.