PUBLIC OPINION

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21043, 20 February 1940, Page 7

PUBLIC OPINION

As expressed by correspondents, whose letters ars welcome, but tor whose views we nave no responsibility. Correspondents are requested to write in ink. It Is essential that anonymous writers enclose tbelr proper names as a guarantee ot good faitb. Unless Ibis rule Is compiled with, tbelr letters will rot appear.

LACK OF PUBLIC TELEPHONES (To the Editor) Sir, —May I bring to your notice the position with regard to the lack of telephone facilities in the district stretching from the Hamilton post office to the corner of Pembroke Street and Lake Crescent? Unfortunately the telephone box at the bottom of the hospital hill has been out of order. Take the lake, for instance. The nearest public telephone to this domain is at the post office. Picnic parties suffer considerable inconvenience through the lack of provision by the Post and Telegranh Department. Another case of lack of provision is exemplified by the State housing scheme now completed on the Richmond Estate. There State houses are not equipped with telephones, and so the residents have to journey to the post office to put through a call to their friends.—l am, etc., PENNY. Hamilton, February 19. BURDEN OF TAXATION (To the Editor) Sir, —We have heard a lot lately about conscription of wealth, but 1 submit that wealth is already conscripted by such crushing taxation. Mr Nash’s estimate of revenue from taxation for the current year is £40,820,000, or an increase of 60 per cerit since Labour took office. This terrible taxation must in the end destroy our prosperity. No country could stand it. But I daresay the destruction of prosperity will pave the way for the inauguration of Socialism. Of 6582 registerd companies 4436 only had a taxable income of less than £IOOO per company last year. It would seem ns if 4436 companies must be on the verge of ruin, which makes one wonder what will happen to their thousands of employees. Labour is like an untrained housewife who wants £lO a week to keep a house which a thrifty woman would do on less than half that amount. The fact is that the taxpayer could make far better use of the money now taken in taxation. Now we have war taxation on top of the 40 million, and on top of all the national debt has increased under the regime of Labour from approximately £282.000,000 to £340.000,000. What will be the end of this country which in a century of Tory rule has been made so properoGs? Is _it not time the Government handed over the complete control of its finances to a few business men or brains and acumen? Now is the time to tackle the problem. —I am, etc.,

where men work in the social, as distinct from the hermit State, there automatically arises a social value, an economic value of the social environment, commonly called social value of land, or ground rent, or site value. It is the natural social wage, the wage or salary of society, and is added to by every conceivable form of advancement. If it were all (the full annual value) publicly collected, there would be no need of. rates or taxes.

W. P. KENAH, Raglan, February 17.

fourfold and more for extention sites. Further, neither co-operation nor E-P. can possibly give workers the full value of their labour, while a pure parasite, the ground rent landlord, is able to scoop up all the gains of progress economically. For a time, a co-operative or E-P. concern may show some advantages, but as, with the growth of chain stores and other methods, and of co-opera-tion and E-P. themselves, general acceptance wipes out the initial gain of being first in the field, competition then brings all down to the same level of a bare existence, while “the robber that takes all there is left” is the sole final winner. If, however, the local bodies were to collect the full annual ground

rent, or site value, spending most of it where it arose, but passing some on to the State to be used in lieu of taxation for State services, then the abolition of taxes on goods and services would at once result in a substantial rise in real wages—that is, the value of the goods and services a person gets in return for his own labour.

The greater the progress we make, whether it be by improved methods of production and transport, or by E-P. or any other thing good in itself, the greater are both the amount and the proportion of the total of value produced that goes into “social value.” For example, a century ago the site x-alue in what i 6 now Auckland city was very little indeed, but the worker got a living. Today the best sites are valued at the rate of over £500.000 an acre, after all rates and taxes have been allowed for. The worker is still getting just a living, but the ground rent landlord gets a huge annual rental, solely due to the presence ot people and progress, and that social value arises whether the “owner” of the site is asleep or awake, sane or insane. present or absent, and irrespective of anything done on his site. It is this ever-increasing parasitic tribute that is preventing EmployeePartnership from coming fully into its own. and nillv-willy driving us all on to collective slavery. That which is by nature social should be received by society, and the individual thus left with his full earnings. Without that natural law justice, E-P. is on an unscientific, anti-self-inter-est basis, and must finally crash in the general destruction of free enterprise and individual liberty. The E-P. people should seek election on the Hamilton Borough Council and strive to have social economic justice implemented. Let them do that which lies nearest to their hands, gradually converting the whole of New Zealand, and from that the rest of the world, by shining example.— I am, etc.,

T. E. McMILLAN, Matamala. September 18.

ECONOMIC JUSTICE (To the Editor) Sir, —I have received rrom the Em-ployee-Partnership Institute (Hamilton) a booklet giving a summary of the work ”A Cnance For Everybody” by Hyacinthe Dubreuil, and some pamphlets by Mr H. Valder. the founder of the institute. There is much in the literature with which I am in full agreement, but. like the co-operators, the E-P. people almost entirely ignore the working of natural law in the realm of economics—the science dealing with the just distribution of wealth, according to earnings. The authors rightly stress tha primary importance of the instinct «f self-interest in economic life, and they also claim to be scientific. But how can anything be scientific if natural law is disregarded? You may take economics, physics, mathematics, music or chemistry, but whatever it is the science of it is based on the study of natural law, or the action and reaction, th« phenomena of nature, the sequence of things according to the workings of natural law. Now down to brass tacks. Men simply cannot work in the State without the provision of social services. To provide these services there must be a surplus value from which to pay for them, or otherwise they must be provided by the legal robbery known as taxation, or the robbery of the individual by society fer providing social services. Th.s. however, is not scientific. Au all* wise Providence made proper provision for the social fund; and, like all God’s laws, this provision is automatic and infallible, working day and night, quite irrespective of man’s volition, or whether or not man knows of its existence. The first of these services is polioß protection in some form, so that th« producer is both protected while he labours, and is ensured the fruits of his labour'. Where a man has to be his own policeman, or his own schoolmaster, it is a costly business, obliging him to expend valuable time that in a proper society would oe devoted to productive labour. Where such services are provided, and

Everywhere it has been found by co-operators that the very fact of their enterprise and activities has put up the economic value of thß social environment, and when they had to acquire more sites in order to extend their businesses, the holders of titles to land have (quite legally) made them pay double, treble,