INTEREST-FREE MONEY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXV, Issue 14254, 31 December 1946, Page 2

INTEREST-FREE MONEY

Sir, —“Ignorissimus” writes regarding interest-free money, If it becomes too common what is to become of Friendly Societies etc., who depend on interest to help pay benefits?” Well suppose a friendly society benefactor lived in a £IOOO house; reckoning at 5 per cent, interest he would save £SO pei annum on rent. ' If he owned the house, it would have been more easily puichased, or saved for, as the case may be. His baker, the miller, the farmer who supplied the miller, sack, seed and implement firms, mostly work on bank money, the interest of which must all be loaded on to “Benefactor’s” loaf.

During the slump I asked a stock firm manager if his firm could ieduce my interest. His reply was, “If the banks would reduce for us, we could reduce for you.” So I sold my 20 odd prime bullocks at £4 to £5 each, eleven bales of wool went for £4O, and I still slogged along with shears, scythe and pit saw — armstrong’s patents we called them —while people in England probably had tears in their eyes at the .thoughts of not being able to manufacture machinery in exchange for fat lambs, delicious butter and cheese, and wool to manufacture into clothing, with all stores, markets, ships and warehouses cluttered up.

Why Henry Ford is such a great advocate of interest-free money is because tens of thousands of people driving around in rattle traps would scrap them and get new ones if it were not for the throttle hold of interest.\ But to be fair to Henry, who, with J. D. Rockefeller’s corporations, wanted to supply both sides during the war, his greatest argument on interest-free money, I think, was when* he advocated the use of costless credit on the Mussel Shoal Dam before the war. There were many unemployed. When the dam was built, it would be of more value than the paper, and ink spilt, the men of course wanting to eat, whether employed or not. “Ignorissimus” says “In 1917 millions of men were doing things from a sense of duty, which no amount of money would induce them to do - .’’ He also suggests that it is possible to think too much of money. Standing around in freezing slush, scouring harness, grooming donks or delousing oneself up at the guns, scraping entrenching tool handles with bits of glass, scouring the blade with brick

etc - for in specti^^D^r^^ "“ns. endless carting ammunition or til in pitch black raining nights, and thinking of s Zealand gets .monotonous " "I thought of stoush was Si' hilarating. Every patriotic, so when sistance seemed great, one shoot, slash and stab f rom instinct. At that same- time gest, a few men were doing sense of money, whai^l^> duty would entice them to do “Another Worker- who markably short memory gfc “Employment will not be if production, . especially p 2; production, is efficiently develop! Perhaps he was not, farming Z the slump. To quote slnmj lines— • •

The world is full of S production at its peek Yet we live by chewing cjindipiu and crusts of yesterweekAnd manufacturers keep and farmers’ wool can rot " Cause we haven’t got jjie that someone else has got,/ Cannot he remember G.B.S, j/ “Eat your own butter"? JjjijL New Zealand figures I’ll quote C:-! monwealth. The interest .-q $ National Debt adds to the'pmapaj in the following approximate miner: £1 13s 4d every second, jin every minute, £6OOO ■ every £144,0 00 every day, £t;t93 ; lH per week. Now who supplies lie backing for all this addition! money? If additional goods Tee made, who supplies the additkiat money to purchase the additional goods etc. ? The trouble comes ilei the banks cry “No more inflation. - ' 'Then the people should cry, "Ne more interest.’’—l am, etc., ‘.■SOCIALIST.’’