KEEPING DOWN COSTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 150, 27 June 1934, Page 6

KEEPING DOWN COSTS

It is well understood that producers and employers cannot succeed in collecting sufficient money from their undertakings Sinless they "keep downvtheir costs," which, in other language, means "spend as little as possible to recover as much as possible." It is incontrovertible that you cannot take out of a cistern ■more than you put into it; if, therefore, our business has to be run on the lines of "keeping down costs," we should be sensible enough to realise that we' can hope to succeed only if other businesses are run on more costly lines to provide the money for us to reap our profits. It would seem that the "keeping down costs" system enables some businesses to prosper, but only at the expense of others; that it is impossible for all our undertakings to be financially successful unless at least as much finance is provided for them as they yield to one another. It would seem also that the injunction to "keep down costs" ■ emanates from the debt system of money under which the banker requires more money to be repaid to him than he provides. The producer, the importer or the retailer can earn the respect and support of his banker only by being successful in raiding society for more money than is furnished to society. How can it be done? Probably the answer is by going into debt, and the debt-ridden condition of the world to-day, and the impossibility of payment, is surely ample proof that our financial system is not all that it is "cracked up" to be, and that the doctrine of "keeping down costs" cannot result in the prosperity of one and all. If we follow the doctrine to its logical conclusion, we should pour nothing at all into the cistern, and expect to draw from it an ever-increasing quantity. The maxim "Ex nihilo nihil fit" ("Out of nothing, nothing comes") is defied by our financial system. W. J. GATENBY.