"UNEARNED INCREMENT."

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10638, 14 April 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

"UNEARNED INCREMENT."

o :o REMARKABLE STATEMENTS FROM • , GLASGOW. " Five hundred and eighteen petitions from all parts of Great Britain Avere presented to the Chancellor of the Exchequer urging the Government to legislate for the taxation of. land values. The petitions were handed in by the Lord Provost of Glasgow, who headed a representative deputation of delegates ' from municipal and other rating authon- I ties. §ome remarkable figures were given by Mr John Ferguson, chairman of the Conference of Rating Authorities. i He said that Glasgow recently bought a new park for £29,000. Alongside it ran 12 acres of land for Avhich no one would have given £50 per acre, but no sooner Avas the park opened and tram ; ways extended, than that land became worth £1140 per acre. ' Glasgow spent £60,000 on another park. The rents of the houses around it were raised to an amount that Avould have relieved the ratepayers of their entire outlay. In the United States, by the Law of Betterment, the whole o'f that increment would belong to the city whose municipal expenditure created it, and 80 per cent, of the annual value be appropriated (in most of the States) to repay to the public its outlay. He submitted that no matter how industrious, economical, prudent, and moral the people became,' there would continue to be millions in poverty and degradation so long as this appropriation of the increment obtained.