AS OTHERS SEE US.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 268, 30 May 1888, Page 2

AS OTHERS SEE US.

A favourite assertion of English people it that the public debt of New Zealand is excesbive in amount, and that therefore the burden of taxation is most grievous The«e critic 3 point to the fact that our debt, is £55 per head of the population, against only £21 per | head in the United Kingdom, and that our taxation is heaver in about the same pn portion. A writer in the London " Financial News " lately pointed out the fallacy of these compaiisons, thus :: — • "The B'.itish public must remember that the New Zealand debt of £36,000, 000, (in lound figures) is made up of items which do not appear iA all in the English National Debt. Of the New Zealand public debt about £14,000,000 were expended on railways, which produce a not return of about 3 per cent., notwithstanding management; which leaves much to bp desired. If to the English National Debt he added £815, 000,000, which have been expended on the English Railways, we arrive at a total of £], 558,000,000 ; but even this figure, large as it is, cannot yet be compared to the £3G,000,000 'of the New Zealand debt, for in the latter are included not only railways, but also telegraphs and all public buildings. It is difficult to arrive at anything like an estimate of the cost of the telegraphs and public buildings in England ; but assuming that the total is only £1,600. 000, which is undoubtedly far below the truth, the charge per head of the popuiation would be £41 9s. Compare this with the £55 above mentioned for New Zealand, and we find that each person in the United Kingdom is charged about 20 per cent less than each person in New Zealand. So far, then, the comparison is distinctly in favour of the United Kingdom, but only apparently so. For while most of the male inhabitants of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom earn only from 10s to 15s a week, it may safely be stated that no able-bodied man in New Zealand earns less than 30s. The Imperial revenue in England is £90,000,000, or £2 10s per head. The revenue raised by taxation in New Zealand is as nearly as possible £4 10s per head, which shows that the New Zealand population can afford, and pays without grumbling, a far larger sum than the English taxpayers. To this, of course, it may be 1 said that New Zealand is over-taxed, so we will turn to another standard of comparison. The exports of the United Kingdom in the year 2885 were valued at £271,000,000, or £7 10s per head ; those of New Zealand at £6,820,000, or £10 9s 8d per head. The New Zealander, therefore, earned very nearly 50 per cent, more by trade than the inhabitant of the United Kingdom. The outcome of all these figures is surely simple enough. It is, that the earnings of the individual being nominally higher in New Zealand, he can afford to pay a nominally higher sum to the revenue. In other words, the load of public debt, though greater in figures, is not actually gi cater in weight. Assumingthat the average wages and earnings are only 50 per cent, per head move in New Zealand than in the mother country, ■ which is a very low estimate, the New Zenlandcr could bear 50 per cent, per head more of public debt than tho inhabitant of the United Kingdom. Thin would mean £(>'), as aguhbt llio £55 he now boars."