DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XV, Issue 126, 4 May 1925, Page 4

DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.

A collation of various statistical r figures recently made by the Hon. c Walter Ruuciman shows very distinctly £ that in the Old Country the distribution j of accumulated wealth is mucJi wider ( than it was thirty years ago, and that j it is steadily widening. From data t disclosed in official returns collected by , three Government departments Mr. ; Runciman has shown that approxi- ( mateTy 15,000,000 small investors owned £777,834,000 of the firmest financial security m the world, that is, t British Government obligations. This, , however, is not the whole story. These ] figures cover merely the interest held « by 12,300.000 depositors in the Post £ Office Bank, which, at the end of 1924. , reported that their credits amounted , to £280,000,000; deposits in trustee t savings banks, which at tho same date < amounted to about £82.000,000, held < by 2,282,000 persons; and £176,000,000 i of National Savings Certificates, held « by about 500,000 small capitalists. 11 the large interests of the wage-earning public and the less well-to-do middle j class in cooperative banks and societies, j building and friendly societies, and tile • assurance institutions were taken into ( account, the number of small capitalists J must be even greater than that dis- < closed by Mr. Runciman’.s figures, while i the amount saved would also be con- ( siderably higher. Clearly tho widening j of the distribution of wealth is a matter j of the greatest economic, social, and ( political importance; it indicates that, « in spite ot appearances which might point to the contrary conclusion, there ( has been a marked development in re- 1 cent years of thrifty habits by a growing body ot far-sighted and prudent < people. Discussing these figures, a writer in a London financial journal says that i tho distribution of the national income is a matter of much greater importance, in one sense, than the distribution o. accumulated wealth. If the distribution were made equally, it would not follow that the accumulation of savings would be equally divided, either from year to year or from period to period, inferences drawn from the holdings of wealth as to the distribution ot income are therefore dangerous and, even if it could be proved that the vast bulk ot the accumulated savings was in the hands of a relatively small proportion of tho population, it might show that wo had the misfortune to number among the population a large body of thriftless persons. Unfortunately trustworthy figures of the distribution of the national income are unobtainable; but the figures given in the Report ot the Commissioners of Inland Revenue as to ' the amount of income that has come under the review of the income-tax authorities enable certain broad generalisations to be made. Tho income that came under review in 1922-23 was £2,900,000,000, which compares with £1.111.000,000 in 1912-13. This increase of 160 jx?r cent is, of course, partly to be accounted for by the lowering of the exemption limit from £l6O to £l3O in 1915-16. But the increase in the amount of income exempted from taxation, cither because income was below the taxable limit or because of abatements and allowances, was very much greater namely, from £356,000,000 to £1.570.000,000. In other words, the taxable income was less than doubled, the figure rising from £755.500,000 to £ 1,320.000.000. As tho exemptions relieved 2,200.000 persons from payment of income-tax out of a total of 4,700,000 it would seem to follow that the distribution of income was wider in 192223 than it was ten years previously.