BALANCED BUDGETS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 10, 7 October 1936, Page 10

BALANCED BUDGETS

It is to be hoped that the somewhat pointed remarks by Mr. J. A. Aiton, of Derby, at the Empire Chambers of Commerce Congress yesterday on the subject of balanced budgets and stabilised currencies will not be lost on the New Zealand public. It was a strange thing, he said, how the people of the world could be led away by the belief that they could put their hands out into. the air and grasp the substantial. “Means of trying to get something for nothing have been tried again and again.” It was remarked recently by an observ’d of events in the United States that the depression had produced a whole crop of economic and financial reformers with fancy theories about getting rid of obligations without paying them, but as soon as things began to improve those purveyors of quack nostrums found themselves discredited and their theories derided. We in this country have had a similar experience. If the individual citizen would consider the question of national budget-balancing in. the same light as he balances his own personal income and expenditure, he would be convinced that the only sound course fd‘r any Government to follow is to cut its coat according to the cloth. As Mr. Aiton expressed it. “Men can only get by sacrifice themselves something of real and lasting good.” That is a piece of sound philosophy that hjpw Zealand people might profitably reflect upon at their leisure.