LAND VALUES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 350, 10 May 1928, Page 8

LAND VALUES

Sir. — .The letter of your correspondent, W .J.A., is, in my opinion, somewhat paradoxical. He mixes up cause and effect, and worst of all assigns to the banking Institution the right to be the final arbiters of land values whereas in a. wholly natural state this should be the sole prerogative of the State. Banks should never be allowed to interfere between Natures bounty to man. the land, administered by its °^ ner ’ ,««> State, and the man who is working on the land. Let

me point out to “W.J.A.” that Mr. R*.T mond was quite right in blaming artificial land values for the state of the country. He did not the land, qua land! Ido not se* analogy between the purchase horse and the land question. h man bought a horse for £4O and found it was only worth £ 20. he a poor judge of a horse. Certainl* question can be made analogous to land position, i.e.. if a man bou* horse for £4O, and be considers horse was worth that to him for work he wanted it to do, -jj horse, o.her things being equal, always have that value for the other hand, if he bought theD«-J for speculative purposes for then found that he could not for more than £ 20. he is a loße £ sought to put a fictitious value on horse, having added nothing to trinsic w'orth. He gambled aP<l The early land boom gamblers cr ~®_. Lhe artificial land values, and winners through the ineptitude °*| Q4 . government, and now that a tion is inevitable, someone^ In his last paragraph, “WJ-A-that preferential trade, * broadly speaking, protection* cause, and the handling of the question the effect of situation, and goes on to say, y* 1 man on the land more value for _ he produces and the land right itself more quickly than .. be done by any Government roeas jjl I say, give to the man on the ia that he produces. It is his products of his labour are lute property to do with as he vr tax the land which has commodities on a fixed va uattonstatement replies to “W.J-As ec i o tion in reference to cause and . tf Fiscal revenues must be rai^ e f: n*tthey are not raised through *•# ural channel of land values. 1 must tax the products an<i of industry, raise tariff wa . ’nicto oo international antipathies. and their natural corollaries, armies and navies. „ . rr JCT. CHAS. BAlh®