MR GIFFEN ON BRITAIN'S WEALTH.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 471, 14 May 1890, Page 4

MR GIFFEN ON BRITAIN'S WEALTH.

The celebrated statistician, Mr Gifien, recently gave a lecture before the Royal Statistical Society in London on “ The Value of the Wealth of the United Kingdom.” From it the following remarkable facts are disclosed. The accumulated wealth of the United Kingdom to the end of the year 1885 . was in round numbers 10,000 million pounds sterling. This would give £270 to every person in the United Kingdom, or an average of £1,350 to each family. The estimate is based on a valuation of United Kingdom as “ a going concern.” Mr Giffen confesses that the totals are somewhat bewildering, but says he is certain these figures represent something very near the mark. Taking the countries separately, England has £3OB per head of property, Scotland £243, and Ireland £93. Comparing the three richest nations in the world, the figures stand thus : Wealth per head of population in the United Kingdom £270, in France £l9O, in the United States £l6O. According to Mr Giffen, we are not as rich as we ought to be, and if the wealth of the nation had increased as it did during the ten vears prior to 1879, we ought to be worth £12,000,000,000. We have fallen short of that by two thousand millions. This wealth if realised would pay the national debt thirteen and a half times over, and if divided would give to every family in tho kingdom an income of one pound per week without work. Outof this£lo,ooo,ooo,ooo, £8,500,000,000 is engaged in making more money ; it is invested, and bringing in fresh wealth and fresh income. The annual aggregate income of the people of the United Kingdom is said to be from fifteen hundred to two thousand million pounds. These figures are very startling and well worth studying. If it be true that an equitable division of this great wealth will give each family an income of one pound per week, without work, as Mr Giffen asserts, there must be a very unequal division when so many hundreds of thousands are in abject poverty, and so many living in princely grandeur. The causes are not far to seek. The wealth of a nation is produced by the industry of its population ; this stands to reason. But how i 9 a nation’s wealth, say at the close of a twelve months’ work, divided ? It is divided in this way : First wages are paid to labour, then interest paid on the capital employed, and rent is paid on the land utilised.

Now, it is a very curious fact that nearly all the old and well-known writers on political economy, when dealing with the immense surplus of wealth which remains after these fixed charges are paid, quietly 'infer that in some mysterious manner it is proportionately divided between the three "factors that have produced it. Is this so? Our common sense and knowledge of affairs generally tell ns it is not so. Labour in no case gets more than its bare Wages, whereas it is as much entitled to its fair share in the common profits as either of the other factors necessary to produce wealth who appear to scoop the pool. The wages of labour are ruled not by the value of the work performed, but by competition in the so-called labour market, and, as a matter of fact, the labourer is paid according to the exigencies of his circumstances, and the competition there may be for the place he wishes to fill. When a state of things such as this is continued for centuries is it not manifest that the labourer, except under very exceptional circumstances, can never cease from being a labourer on wages ? His opportunity of raising himself through receiving as he ought to receive the fair and just reward ot his labours is denied him. Generally, very little more than power to purchase the necessaries of life is secured to him by his wages and his children have to follow in his footsteps, thus forming and perpetuating what is called a working class. If the labourer received his equal share of the surplus wealth of the nation which he has produced, we should see more comfortable homes established and the thrifty and industrious man more frequently raising himself and those belonging to him in the social scale. —Auckland Star.