“just as much the function of Government, and just as necessary a part of the democratic regulation of industry to safeguard the interests of the community as a whole and those of grades and classes of private consumers in the matter of prices, as it is by the Factory and Trade Board Acts to protect the rights of the wage-earning producers in the matter of wages, hours of labour and sanitation, or by the organized police force to protect the householder from the burglar.” A Revolution in Public Finance A complete revolution in national finance is overdue, in the opinion of the Labour Party. Too long, it says, has our national finance been regulated on a basis opposed to the teaching of political economy, according to the views of the possessing classes and the desire for profits of the financiers. There ought to be such a system of taxation “as will secure all the necessary revenue to the Government without encroaching on the prescribed national minimum standard of life of any family, without hampering production or discouraging any useful personal effort, and with the closest possible approximation to equality of sacrifice.” The Labour Party accordingly would institute direct taxation of all incomes exceeding the necessary cost of family maintenance, and the direct taxation of private fortunes both during life and at death for the redemption of the National Debt. It opposes taxation calculated to increase the price of food or necessaries of life, and holds that indirect taxation of commodities, whether by customs or excise, should be limited to “luxuries.” It would retain and increase the excess-profits tax and, until nationalization of minerals, the mineral-rights duty. The unearned increment of urban land and mineral values it would divert by taxation wholly into the public exchequer. Death duties would be regraduated and heavily increased, so as to turn into the national coffers all the wealth of every person deceased in excess of a quite moderate amount to be left for family provision. In addition, the Labour Party stands for “conscription of wealth,” described as “a capital levy, chargeable, like death duties, on all property, with exemption of the smallest savings up to £1,000, but rising rapidly in percentage with the value of the property, for the purpose of freeing the nation of as large an amount as possible of its present load of interest-bearing debt.” Co-operative Societies would be left entirely free from this levy. The Surplus Wealth for the Common Good