“UNPRECEDENTED PROSPERITY”

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22309, 25 January 1938, Page 13

“UNPRECEDENTED PROSPERITY”

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. Sir,—-Unprecendented prosperity!! Oh yes. And the price? Unprecedented taxation, unprecedented national debt, unprecedented local body debt, unprecedented private debts, unprecedented caus on the public for financial support for public institutions, health camps, monthly lotteries, and relief cur . of. poverty, unprecedented nigh cost of living (ye gods, note the pnrase cost of living”), unprecedented nigh cost of dying.—Yours, etc., T „„ HOWEVER. January 23, 1938.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE E'RESS. Sir.-—The letter of “National Credit' in “The Press” on Saturday is but one of many which have appeared in your columns which await an answer from the Labour Government’s supporters. In this case silence is surely not golden. We are now within nine or 10 months of the General Election, and if attacks are made on the party in power which are logically answerable by something better than silence, irrelevance, tall talk, or smoke-screen tactics, we should now be having all the rebuttals it is in the power of Labour’s defenders to make. It looks as if there is no valid answer to such criticisms as your own leading article and your correspondents' letters invite. Labour may yet have to resort to Sir Joseph Ward’s £70,000,000 loan policy, even though on a more modest scale, to assure the Government's return and to keep the “unprecedented prosperity” going. The sluggishness of the industrial share investment market is proof enough that the employing class is feeling the pinch of high wages and high taxation. Dividends are in too many cases falling. Cost of living has caught up to the increase in wages, despite Government protestations to the contrary, based on misleading general averages rather than average domestic costs, which are the real test. The extra millions which have come from exports of primary products and the loan money (in whatever guise), which the Government has been leaning upon for its “unprecedented prosperity,” is likely to need supplementing by the addition of further generous millions to our swollen national debt and by drastically .increased taxation 'usually passed on deviously to the underdogt. Where it all must end seems pretty obvious. The electors’ verdict will be something like Napoleon's farewell speech to his troops at the battle of Waterloo. —Yours, etc., TA-TA. January 24. 1938.

TO THE EDITOR Of TUB PRXSR. Sir, —No doubt if we take a general survey of the individual’s circumstances they are prosperous if compared with the years previous to the Labour Government However, the national overseas trade balance is not to be compared with the balances of the years 1932-33-34. Yet the individual’s position is the true point from which to judge. Many hard positions can be overlooked when judgments are made from aggregate statistics. When the individual’s circumstances are reviewed it is easily seen that there is much for the Labour Government to accomplish. Occasionally, when reading the papers, information comes to light which shows what many people are living on a low wage level, when the present cost of living is considered. The increase of the wage and salary earners’ purchasing power without a reacting rise in prices is a problem the Government has to surmount.

New Zealand is easily meeting overseas trade costs. When such is the fact, the internal prosperity or the prosperity of the individual rests with the Government. The last term of office of the previous Government affords a classic example of how a nation can be prosperous and its people be living in misery. During those years of 1931-1935 New Zealand profited up-to the figure of £16,000,000 sterling per annum and the reigning government gave the people four years of misery instead of four years of exceptional prosperity which that money made possible. The fact that every young man of 25 to 30 is not receiving a salary sufficient to run a home is the fault of the Government. Unless the Government aims at a point as high as this it will fail to strengthen New Zealand’s position numerically.—Yours, etc., KAYE *HOE. January 22, 1938.

to 'the editor or the press. Sir,—The following sentence appears in a letter in “The Press” to-day: "No individual, and no country, can get out of debt (i.e., become fully prosperous) by getting deeper into debt. Borrowed money has attached to it certain costs, and the two items are in total greater than the sum borrowed. So any prosperity based on debt (Mr Savage’s kind) must be less in financial value than its financial cost. One enjoys the small pseudo prosprity now and enjoys (?) the big Savage depression after.” After reading this letter I am very much surprised to find it written over the pen-name “National Credit,” and shall be pleased if the writer will define what is "national credit” in reality, and why he used it after writing the words “pseudo prosperity” in the sentence above quoted.—Yours, etc., THE MAN IN THE STREET. January 22, 1938.