HE recent book by Professor J. E. Meade, “Efficiency, Equality and the Ownership of Property”, has information on points of interest to readers of “The Week’ in addition to those already noted. (1) He provides new material on the concentration
far as the net ownership of property is concerned we live,
not in a semi-Socialist state, but in an anti-Socialist
state.” (Page 69).
(3) Meade points out that “the figures of personal
incomes derived from the Income Tax returns will seriof wealth and income from wealth. He gives the two ously underestimate personal incomes from property. ™ statistics as follows (Page 27): They exclude capital gains. But the increase in the value 2
of companies’ shares which is due to the accumulation Percentage of Percentage of Percentage of of undistributed profits represents in effect a personal Population Total Personal income of the shareholders which has been saved for
Personal Income from them by the companies themselves.” Thus he points out
Wealth 1960 Property that at first sight the Inland Revenue figures give personal
(before tax) income from property as only 7.1 per cent. of all incomes,
1959 and Meade calls this a “gross underestimate”. By Top 1% 42 60 Meade’s own calculation a more reasonable estimate Top 5% 75 92 would be 19.1 per cent. of all incomes, after deprecia- Top 10% 83 99 tion has been accounted for, but before the influence
of the State is accounted for. As the value of taxation It will be noted that the concentration of income extracted from companies usually slightly exceeds the from wealth is greater than the concentration of wealth annual interest on the national debt the final figure itself. This is because the larger the concentration of would bea few per centiles lower. However, Meade is at wealth the more “efficiently” it can be used: in this way all times using only the Inland Revenue and National large capitalists tend to have a definite advantage over Income statistics themselves in arriving at his figure of smaller ones, 19.1 per cent. In his recent book “Income Distribution (2) Professor Meade points out that, in terms of and Social Change”, Professor Titmuss has indicated. the ownership of real property, the public sector of the that the systematic and large scale practice of taxeconomy is actually a negative quantity. The value of dodging makes it certain that all official statistics underproperty owned by the state or other public agencies is estimate property incomes. If the calculations of both £21,000 million, while the extent of public sector Meade and Titmuss are taken in account the final estiindebtedness to the private sector is £28,000 million. mate for the share of property incomes would be some- Meade concludes that in real terms the size of the public where in between 20 per cent. and 30 per cent. of total sector is minus 14 per cent., and he comments that “as national income.
+ The strikers are demanding an eight-cent hourl Scripto pens are wage increase, a semiority provision and they ei
refused a wage offer which discriminates against the ¢ blacker than Negro workers. Before the strike, some 700 of the 900 @
BLACK!
ANDBILLS, saying “Don’t buy Scripto products.” are being distributed by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in support of a nation-wide boycott of Scripto pens, pencils and lighters. The boycott has been called by members of Local 754 of the AFL-CIO International Chemical Workers Union who have been on strike since Nov. 27 at Scripto’s Atlanta, Ga., plant. The plant was organized 18 months ago, but the company has refused to sign the first union contract.
workers were Negroes classified as “unskilled” and
paid about $1.25 per hour. Only six of the 200 “skilled”
jobs were held by Negroes.
The Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee,
whose headquarters is in Atlanta, has called upon its
supporters throught the country to spur boycott cam-
paigns against Scripto products. The plant is located
two blocks from Rev. King’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church
Early in the strike, King declared: “Now is the
time to identify our movement very closely with
labour.” He said Scripto was only the beginning of
supporting actions by the Southern civil-rights move-
ment to labour organizing strikes. “There will be many
more to follow,” he said.