Single Tax.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 93, 13 October 1894, Page 2

Single Tax.

♦ — how to Nationalise ground RENT. (Published by The Ground Rent Revenue League of New Zealand.) Review by X.P., Feilding. [Article No. 2.1 The second paragraph in No. 1 should have read, " That the State ought to purchase all the freehold land in the colony with debentures." A. correspondent, signing himself " A Colonist," of Takapuna, in the Auckland Weekly News of October 6th, unwittingly supports my view of the case that if the single taxers were to get all the taxes placed on the land it would lead' to a civil war. He says, "If Messrs E. Withy and the single taxers think to despoil the settlers of New Zealand of their hard-earned homes without a straggle they have reckoned without their host. It will be a fight to the death." Let us now turn this precious pamphlet, published by the Ground Rent League of New Zealand, and see what it says. On page six we find : " The entire sum which freeholders have paid to the State for lands now valued at £75,787,895 is £18,872,984. So that in little more than half a century the growth of soiling value and consequently of annual value has been something like 470 per cent." Those who jump at conclusions like Mr Withy, Mr O'Rrgan, and Henry George, will probably exclaim when reading these figures, " It's monstrous that the freeholders should keep such an enormous unearned increment." Let us analyse the above figures. I cannot, without having recourse to a long search over the records of the Lands Department, give the amounts paid in cash each year by freeholders for land. Let us take Withy's figures as true, viz., £18,372,984 for fifty years which will give an average of roughly £270,000 per annum. Let us take 7 per cent as the interest on money invested. Money lent at 7 per cent, interest doubles itself in ten years. The first year's money £270,000 invested in 1840 ought to be worth in 1890 the sum of £10,640,000. The second year's money invested in 1841 would be also £10,640,000 in 1891. The third year's money in 1842 would be also £10,640,000 in 1892. The fourth year's money invested in 1848 would also be £10,640,000 in 1893. The fifth years money invested in 1844 would be £6,567,000. The sixth year's money invested in 1845 would be £8,512,000. The seventh year's money invested in 1846 would be £7,448,000. The eighth year's money invested in 1847 would be £6,---384,000. Thenineth year's money invested in 1848 would be £4,320,000. The tenth year's money invested in 1849 would be £4,256,000. The eleventh year's money invested in 1850 would be £3,192,000. The twelfth year's money invested in 1851 would be £2,128,000. I need not carry the working out of this matter further, for already the money paid by freeholders to the State for the land plus a legitimate interest amounts to the sum of nearly £90,000,000. There is to add to that sum the money paid the year 1852 to 1898 plus interest on outlay. If anyone chooses to work it out he would find it an enormous amount. Let us be generous to Messrs Withy, O'Regan and Co. and call it roughly only a L 100.000,000. Take from that sum the unimproved value of the land as given by Mr Withy L 75,000,000 it leaves L 25,000,600 of unearned decrement. Henry George, Sir George Grey, Sir Robert Stout and others have made a great hullabaloo about the unearned increment. Where is it ? Brother freeholders let us take a leaf out of Henry George's book and agitate for a payment from the State for the decrement. Let us ask the Hon. the Colonial Treasurer of New Zealand for L 25,000,000. Some of us have perhaps lost money by investing in land, e.g., the case of a bank* rapt in Wellington last week. He gave £2000 for a section on the reclaimed land and sold it tor £1000. In the Auckland Weekly News, of October 4thj is the case of a poor settler who gaye £900 for a email farm, and was lately compelled to Bell it for £800. I challenge Sir Robert Stout, Mr O'Regan, Mr Withy or anyone else to prove that in the aggregate there is any unearned inorement on the land in New Zealand ; and jet these two words ' unearned increment' are trotted out ad nauteam by some of our so-called statesmen. If I ever write the history of some of the Socialistic movements of our oolony I shall certainly not spare in my critioisms oertaio of our politicians who are looked up to by many as shining lights leading the people to the millennium, whereas tbej are like the Will-o'-the-Wisp hovering above the quagmires of a fast approaching debacle. It has been calculated by some one that every pound's worth of gold obtained from the sou of New Zealand has cost 21s to 225 ; and in like manner millions of money have been brought out by private parties from England and other countries and spent on land in New Zealand, and as I have previously shown the money invested plus a fair compound interest amounts to far more than the land is worth now according to the assessment of 1891. New Zealand is a glorious country and has before it a splendid future ; provided fadists and theorists are excluded from both our Houses of Legislature. We want hard headed, practical men to rule the country, men who can look at both sides of a question and not jump at con- \ elusions. Charles Kinpsley in ' Alton Locke * says:— 4 - Every age has its political and social nostrums, and fanoies them infallible, and the next generation arises to curse them as failures in practice and superstitious in theory, and try some new nostrum of its own."