HIGH WAGES IN RUSSIA

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28256, 18 April 1957, Page 16

HIGH WAGES IN RUSSIA

£20,000 A Year For Academicians

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, April 16. “Let nobody think there are not high salaries in Russia,” said Mr Nigel Birch, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, in the House of Commons when defending the surtax reliefs in the Budget. “A factory manager there earns £6OOO a year, an academician £20,000 and, if you happen to be a ballet dancer, you earn still more,’’ he said. Russian aircraft designers’ standards of living were far higher than British. They had palatial apartments, dachas outside Moscow, estates in the Crimea, and so on. Mr Birch also said Britain was, in Mr Harold Wilson’s words, nearly at the bottom of the international league when it came to tax reliefs. Before the Budget r married man with two young children who got an increase in salary from £3OOO to £4OOO would have kept £4OO of the extra £lOOO. In Russia he would keep £865, in Canada £737, in the United States £732, and in Sweden £493. After the Budget the Briton would keep £509 8s lid. “It is only by offering incentives that the emigration of men of ability can be halted,” said Mr Birch.