State Extravagance.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20625, 15 August 1932, Page 8

State Extravagance.

The Premier of Victoria, in a statement reported in the cable news on Saturday, expressed alarm at the fact that there were in Victoria 604,5.13 recipients of "State charity," supported by fewer than 100,000 taxpayers at a cost of £8,000,000 a year. Such figures, which could be paralleled in practically every democratically governed country in the woi'ld, show why it is so difficult for governments to lie economical. An orerwhelmingly large proportion of the voters in each, State is either not, taxed at all or taxed so lightly that the burden is not felt. For the politician, therefore, the inducement to spend, measured in terms of votes, is always greater than the inducement to economise. To make matters worse, the morality governing the relations between individuals seldom governs the relations between the individual and the State. Men practise deceptions on the State without any twinge of conscience and in the knowledge that, unless they have resorted to flagrant dishonesty, they will not incur any moral stigma. "Only one consideration will ever induce'the American " people to retrace the steps they have " made in democratic government," says Mr -J. M. Beck in Our Wonderland of Bureaucracy, " and that is the " ever increasing cost of bureaucracy, "and even this consideration will not " greatly affect them until they become " 'tax-conscious'." Yet, as Mr Beck admits, a nation in which only 400,000 people out of 120,000,000 pay suball the income tax is most unlikely to become " tax-conscious." The Press has many times suggested that the only way to make everyone realise the financial responsibilities of citizenship is to levy some direct tax, however small, on all incomos; and the truth of this is underlined and emphasised by events almost every day, oversea and at home.