DIFFERENT TIMES : DIFFERENT METHODS

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 50, 22 November 1941, Page 8

DIFFERENT TIMES : DIFFERENT METHODS

The Minister of Industries and Commerce, in an address to manufacturers during the week, resurrected the strange contention, frequently heard during the years of trade depression, that because a State could raise immense sums of money for war purposes it should be able to do the same thing for productive development. In times such as these many drastic actions have to be taken, which could be justified only on the ground that they would assist in the preservation of the State as a State. Foreign securities have to be surrendered to the authorities and sold by them to obtain foreign exchange. Taxation has to be raised to such heights that, as has happened only this week in Australia, Governments have had to take action to ensure that the taxpayers retained a fraction of their income. It is futile to contend that what must be done to meet exceptional conditions in time of crisis should be done in the ordinary course of events. Take the position of companies and individuals quoted by the Minister of Finance when he addressed the annual conference of the Federation of Labour this year. He mentioned a company that had made a profit of £lO,OOO and had to pay in taxes and compulsory loan the sum of £10,386/5/-. ‘'There is not much left for dividends there,” Mr. Nash added. “Out of capital this company had to pay £386 over and above its profits.” He mentioned another company which had had to find for the Government £11,386 in excess of its profits, and an individual with a big income who had been called upon to pay, in taxation and compulsory loan, £3947 in excess of the amount he received during the year. Could that sort of thing be continued as a permanent policy when peace is again restored ? What is done when the nation is endangered is one thing, but what it can, and should do, in the. com se of its normal national growth, is quite another. It would be just as reasonable to contend that because in many countries millions of workers are putting in 12 hours daily that that should continue when the war is over. War impoverishes a nation, increases its bin den of debt and makes prodigal use of its resources, but these things have to be faced because the existence of the State is at stake, they could never figure in a policy for normal times for the simple leason that they would smash the taxable capacity of the country. Ihe best course, and it could be recommended to the Minister of Industries and Commerce, would be to leave the productive development, which he mentioned, and also the financial arrangements involved, to the initiative and enterprise of the people.