THE BURDEN OF TAXATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23055, 4 December 1936, Page 8

THE BURDEN OF TAXATION

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I suspect that the addition of the letter "A" by you to my penname has made a false impression on the mind of "P. F. S." because his answer to my accusation of the late Government of misappropriating the unemployment tax is pure unadulterated abuse. Perhaps he is confident of inducing thus in me an inferiority complex which will pave the way to an easy victory for himself. He says I am "evidently obsessed with the idea that Mr Forbes and his colleagues were inhuman monsters of iniquity, unfit to live in a civilised community." Evidently that is his own consciousness about them if my accusations are true. There was nothing in my letter, either by assertion or insinuation, to justify such an uncharitable conclusion. It is quite plain he has concluded I am " a"' voluntary Communist of the Russian type, whereas, in adopting the penname of "Voluntary Communist" my intention was to convey the idea that I believed in the Communism practised by the Christians after Pentecost. My religious principles would not allow me to think the ex-Prime Minister and his colleagues were "inhuman monsters," though I do think some of their acts were nothing short of brutal tyranny. "P. F. S." says "the reasons for which I have been out of work for three years are best known to myself." Yes, and if he would like to know the reasons it is because my last employer tyrannically informed me that I would have to do my work and do well whether I got paid for it or not, and the previous one pushed me over the doorstep—he was not gentlemanly enough to ask me to go—shortly after I refused to tell him a secret which I have since assessed at £SOO. Of course. I would never think of accusing the ex-Prime Minister of being responsible for the world slump, as I am well aware it was the American money magnates who started it and who sent word to Britain, after it had been in operation for a considerable time, that it was not time to lift the (depression) oppression. What I did say was that Mr Forbes boasted at a sports meeting that he would take all the responsibility and had plenty more "stamina" left He was referring to the unjust and cruel legislation that was being passed by the Government of which he was the head. Not only so. but he boasted he would have all the workers in a state of slavery before long. The verdict of the country at the last election and his recent forced abdication of the leadership of the Opposition is a true indication of.what the people of New Zealand think of him as a Prime Minister.- The other parts of " P.F.S 's " letter are only evasions and quibbles, and therefore I am ignoring I am. etc., Voluntary Communist.

December 3. [The ex-Prime Minister made no such boast as is ascribed to him in the above letter.—Ed. O.D.T.]