MANUFACTURERS' VIEW

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 125, 23 November 1932, Page 8

MANUFACTURERS' VIEW

REPLY TO MR. M CLEOD

TAX ON COMMUNITY

"If exchange were fixed at 25 per cent, it would amount, on present balance of trade figures, to a tax of roughly £8,000,000 a year upon the community as a whole for the benefit of the farmers as a class" the New- Zealand Manufacturer's' Federation asserts in a reply to statements made by.the Hon. A. D. McLeod,,M.P. "As there are about 80,000 farmers in New Zealand, the proposal is to tax the community, through exchange, in order to subsidise the farmers at an average of £100 per farmer per annum.' ' "The- phrase 'bolstering up uneconomic industries' has been a feature of tho propaganda by certain farmers and importers directed against New Zealand's protective tariff. • It hag been said that some manufacturing industries were being enabled, to Burvive only by means of an indirect subsidy, through the tariff, at the expense of the rest of the community. "UNECONOMIC INDUSTRY." • "Mr. MeLeod tells us that over the past two years the pastoral farming industry' has > not earned 6 per cent, even on the cost of improvements and stock. He demands therefore some method to' spread as equitably as possible over the whole community a greater share of the load which tho pastoral farming industry cannot much longer continue to carry. "In brief, Mr. McLeod asserts that pastoral farming has become an uneconomic industry, and he' demands that tho rest of the community shall be called upon to subsidise this uneconomic industry in order to maintain it. "The world's need for wool has diminished, and will perhaps continue to -diminish. Is the wool-growing industry, then, to be maintained at the expense of the community as a whole, even though it has become uneconomic, and even though it may in time become obsolete? Suppose this principle had been applied to tho musicians employed in picture houses when the development of talkies destroyed the 'industry' of those^mus-i----cians. Or when the coming of the motor-car rendered the old coachbuildmg industry obsolescent and uneconomic, would Mr. MeLeod have called upon.tho whole community to tax itself in order to maintain the old coachbuilding industry? "Where the increasing use of oil fuel has rendered many coalmines uneconomic, would Mr. MeLeod tax the people of New Zealand to make up the losses of tho coal owners? Perhaps Mr. MeLeod cannot see that he is advocating the introduction of a most dangerous principle; He is asking New Zealand to adopt a form of State charity through tlje taxation of profitable industries in order to maintain unprofitable ones."