USE OF PUBLIC CREDIT

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21863, 17 August 1936, Page 4

USE OF PUBLIC CREDIT

TO THE EDITOB OP THE PRESS. Sir, —It is little wonder that the Hon. W. Nash, Minister for Finance, is becoming popularly known as “the Snowden of the South Seas.” From an election manifesto issued by Mr Savage prior to the general election. I quote the following: “The public credit should be the means used to establish a money system which would equate buying power with production.*’ Naturally, most people thought that the word “should” would mean “would” when -the Labour party won the election; but, perhaps, the “sh” in “sbshould” should have warned them. It is, of course, pardonable that the public should credit the pledge quoted above —it seemed so necessary to equate buying power with production, and the use of the public credit appeared to be the only way to do it. We all believed, of course, that the public credit was the capacity of New Zealanders to produce goods and services, and that this capacity could be drawn upon by monetising it,, costlessly, of course, and debt free, possibly by what appeared the most sensible way, the issue of consumer credit in the form of a national dividend, so that demand on total production would be effective. Now, it appears that we have to reorient our ideas on what does constitute. the public credit. It would never do to be wrong twice, so I must be careful in trying to explain.—The public credit is the capacity of New Zealanders to believe what Mr Nash says, and this capacity will be drawn upon by monetising it in the best of all possible ways, . haihely, by taxation.—Yours, etc., CONSUMER CREDIT. August 15, 1936.