DEFLATION
Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 241, 17 August 1921, Page 7
About this newspaper
DEFLATION
The Editor, Sir, — When Judge Fraser Of the Arbitration Court was in" Auckland recently he gave a lecture at the Ley's Institute, and during the course of that lecture had much to say abomX deflation. If the local papers were at all correct, he made some of the most astonishing statements. Our old champion of the Arbitration Court, "Jimmy" McCombs ought to have Ween there. One of the learned gentleman's statements was to tbe effect that the high peak of prices referred -to by Mr. McCombs in his. .extremely able pamphlet "The 9/- Bonus," really did not exist, it nominally was there owing to. the high prices of • certain locally produced foodstuffs which could not be ..moved on, account ot the dislocation ot ; ■ •*:'_—s~-y~r. ~"r~- J : —-^
transport during the epidemic, BUT OWING TO THE FACT THAT NOBODY COULD AFFORD TO PAY THEM, people went without, and therefore nobody paid those high prices.
The business ol the Government Statistician and tne Arbitration CoiLt. Judge promises to become extremely simplified under Judge Fraser's new method. See the extreme usauty of it—the profiteers are ro raise prices so high above the purchasing power of wages that tlie ordinary £4 to £5 per week wage plug like myw4ll have to cut out half tne tucker formerly eaten, purchase no new ciothes, buy no such extravagant things as newspapers or postage stamps (beer and 'baccy went long ago), and then when we have .survived on half rations for a period Mr. Fraser will comfort us by saying that "it doesn't really matter, nobody paid those high prices, so we have no need to take- them into account."
Which method cf reasoning is beautifully clear and reminds one very forcibly of the yarn about the. man who was teaching his donkey to live on nothing a day, "Just as the damned thing was getting used to it he went and died." —Yours fraternally, E..T.8.A.
