Graduated Taxation.

Kaikoura Star, Volume XIV, Issue 752, 3 July 1894, Page 6

Graduated Taxation.

The question of graduated taxation is merely one of further regulating the capitalist bv limiting his results as well as his processes. How much is it possible and how much is it prudent to take back from the capitalist’s acquisitions ? These are the only’ questions worth spending tune upon. The possibility is very much a tax collector’s question. I have no doubt a great deal could be done. The prudence of it is a less technical matter and more amenable to lay consideration. 4 For one thing, it will not do to tax down the capitalist below the point at which he will still continue to exert himself heartily for his objects. We must not make him less useful to us as an organiser of industry and creator of wealtli, and with that view we must bear in mind that different men have different wants. Three quarters of a pound of beefsteak satisfies one man’s hunger, another requires a pound and a quarter; one man wants books, another wants champagne, and so ou through everything and everybody. The capitalist wants a good slice of the world—the whole of it, if he could have it; but that, of course, is absurd. As a labourer, and on the point of taste, I think this lust of possession rather vulgar; but there it is, and you have got to deal with it. How much will the capitalist endure to bo taken from him before he becomes desperate i* That is the point. The Lancashire child sweaters of 50 or 60 years ago are said to have cleared 100 per cent, and sometimes more. lam told their modern successors are content with 2 per cent and pleased with 4. A man who makes a £lOO,OOO a year would, I dare say, still work, and work hard, for 50 per cent; but if you tried to cut him down to five and twenty, I am not sure that, with his large ideas of acquisition, he would not either emigrate to where capital was less hard pressed or join a capitalists’ revolutionary league for the political restraint of labour. Al the same time, I think it ceriain that a large amount of the excessive reward of capital could be safely recovered through taxation.— The Fortnightly Review.