The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY. NOVEMBER 22. 1929 WHO HAS THE MONEY?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 827, 22 November 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY. NOVEMBER 22. 1929 WHO HAS THE MONEY?

ONE of tlit; most solemn Soeiiilists in the British Labour Party— Mr. Oliver Baldwin—lias achieved the unique distinction of having evoked the loudest laughter heard for a long* time in the House of Commons. The youthful heir of a famous father, the lit. Hon. Stanley Baldwin, semi-millionaire Conservative, won the right in a ballot to submit a private member’s notice of motion, and he made use of the privilege by announcing intention to learn or suggest something about the distribution of wealth. The parent, apparently without embarrassment, enjoyed the joke upon him. but the son remained serious because he obviously believed that the subject of his notice of motion was not a matter for uproarious merriment. • No doubt, the circumstances of the occasion in the House of Commons were rather incongruous, yet it lias to be remembered iliat the Socialistic sons of rich men. like the heirs of poverty, are beginning to ask quite seriously if the wealth of the world is distributee! to the best economic advantage, to say nothing at <ill about reasonable fairness. They at least are beginning to realise that in a new era of better education and broader democracy the distribution of wealth is anything but a modal of democratic equality. On the other hand, very wealthy people, particularly those 117,000 supertax payers in Great Britain who provide the Chancellor of the Exchequer with £60.000,000 a year, appear in their frequent protests to believe that wealth is changing hands nowadays, and that they are suffering terribly in the process. Too much sympathy need not yet be wasted on them. Their plight is tolerable still. By some oversight peculiar to their class they do not emphasise the fact that their incomes, out of which the voracious collector of supertax annually draws £60.000.000. aggregate £558.000.000 a year. The margin left to those 07.000 poor fellows seems relatively adequate in an age when over a million of their countrymen are continuously on the bread-line. Who has the money in the United Kingdom? The Chancellor of the Exchequer knows the answer, and his intimate knowledge may yet make him as hard to wealthy Englishmen as he was to pleading foreigners recently at The Hague. It may be noted that many earners of income have no terrible reason for protesting against the distribution of wealth as far as it concerns their comfort. The latest available report of the Commissioners of his Majesty’s Inland Revenue, shows that USB persons earn or receive more than £IOO,OOO a year each; 114 draw over £75,000; 307 over £50,000; 001 over £40.000; 557 over £30,000; 543 over £25.000; 077 oyer £20,000; 6,263 over £10.000; 16,040 over £5.000; and 63.27.) over £2.000. These are tolerably good incomes, and although their taxation charges represent the heaviest burden of its kind in the world, they have sufficient left to enable them to join heartily in the uproarious laughter of politicians. In addition to that substantial list of big-income earners, there still are in Great Britain over a score of millionaires, and almost an equal number of landed and commercial families with only slightly less greater possessions. Their estates, it is true, are marked for heavy taxation when the owners are through with riches, but longevity is the outstanding feature of life in the millionaire class. The average age of very rich people in Great Britain for a long time has exceeded the Psalmist’s allotted span. Of course, men may have to live and work longer than ordinary folk in order to acquire any sum between £1,000.000 and £10,000.000, but once fortune has been acquired it takes more than a supertax to end their harassed lives. All the wealth of Great Britain, however, is not distributed among one class. The representatives of Democracy also are floiug very well, notwithstanding bad times, unemployment doles, poor-law relief, and mediocre politics. The world’s traditional home of thrift is still Great Britain, and particularly the northern part of it. Only a few weeks ago. Mr. Snowden was able proudly to tell the International Thrift Conference in London, where thirty different countries were represented, that the savings of British workers totalled £1,500,000,000. N'o fewer than 900,000,000 National Savings Certificates, representing £500,000.000 to the credit of depositors, had been sold, and most of these certificates had been purchased by workers and those whom England knows as il the lower middle classes.” The Socialist Chancellor of the Exchequer did not mention the possibility. of course, but it seems possible that if the working classes continue their admirable practice of thrift, Labour in time will become the Conservative class, laughing uproariously at Mr. Stanley Baldwin giving notice of a mot ion dealing with the distribution of wealth.