ELECTIONEERING ECONOMICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17328, 27 November 1919, Page 8

ELECTIONEERING ECONOMICS.

REPLY TO NEW ZEALAND LAND VALUES LEAGUE. Published by Arrangement f or the X Z We.fare League, Auckland Branch-) The New Zealand Land Values League charges th e Welfare League with employing' camouflage, with trying to make the worse appear the better cause, with being the friend of profiteers and of land monopoly: but abstains entirely from meeting the reasoning in the Welfare League's article. It is a matter of congratulation to the Welfare League when its opponents can find no better way of answering than by imputing to it unworthy methods and motives. The Land Values League does not face the issue, which is this: If during the war the general level of prices has risen 31 per cent., and the money value of a certain sort of property has risen only 22 per cent., can the owners of that property be said to have gained anything : It requires no profound knowledge of economic science, but only a little common sense, to see that they have lost something The above figures are in accordance with the data Mr. Fowlds made use of. so the only question is as to the reasoning. It is quite irrelevant to ask whether the landowners mav not have benefited by the increase in prices in some other ways, or durinc other periods, than the one in' question. They may o# may not have rece'ved hundreds of millions, 'but so far as the. value of the land is concerned—and this was the only po nt raised by the Welfare League has r.bvious'y declined during the war period in every sense except that of money vah'e, and even school children now know that money value is. in these times, no criterion 'of anybody's losses or gains. If there is anv mistake in this reason-ns let the Land Values Leasrus sav so, and point out inst where it exists. If not. let the and Values Leaeue acknowledge that Mr Fowlds has made a mistake. and repudiate th's nonsense about a " trift " to a bodv of men. arisMie out of the relative depreciation of their property. When th<= qu*s'inn has been disnosed of an one of the above-mentioned wavs the Welfare T/eacnio ni«v have some comments to make on the further issues raised in the Lard Values Leasee's article, and on its method of arriving at producer's profits.