Social Security: True and False

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22533, 15 October 1938, Page 16

Social Security: True and False

The Labour, Party's election appeal has the merit of frankness in one respect. Over the air, from public platforms, and in advertisements and printed manifestoes it has enumerated minutely every increase in pensions, unemployment benefits, public works wages, and public service salaries made since the present Government took office. The Prime Minister, in his final election address in Auckland, went as far as to express his confidence that at any rate pensioners and public works employees would not forget the Government when they went to the polling booths. A parliamentary candidate who offered his constituents money out of his own pocket in return for their support would be guilty of bribery and would, if elected, lose his seat. But it is one of the dangerous ironies of democratic government that a candidate is free to promise the electors monetary rewards provided the money is to come from the State—provided, that is, the candidate promises not his own money but the taxpayers' money. The result of the election to-day will depend largely on whether those who have received higher wages and social service benefits, and who are now promised even more substantial benefits, are capable of rising to some higher and more intelligent conception of their responsibilities as citizens than is implied in Labour's open appeal to their cupidity. The young men and women of to-day who vote Labour because the social security scheme promises them 30s a week when they reach the age of 60 are the victims of a shallow political deception. What the State is able to pay them in their old age will not be determined by what a Labour Government has irresponsibly promised in 1938. It will depend (and this Mr Savage does not deny) on the efficiency and the prosperity of the farms and factories of New Zealand. Social security, in the true sense, is not brought about by politicians' promises or by enactments of Parliament; it is not something provided from above by an abstraction called the State; it is something created by the productive labour of every man and woman in the community. Labour's real contribution to social security is not what it is promising to pay in pensions and benefits but what it is doing to make it possible for industry to. carry the burden of pensions and benefits. And by that test its contribution is a negative one. Both the volume and the value of farm production are now decreasing; and most of the available evidence goes to show that factory production is also decreasing. The reasons for this decline are high costs brought about by heavy government spending and the diversion of labour and capital into unproductive State enterprises.