OLD AGE PENSIONS. BRITISH PROPOSALS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 41, 18 February 1908, Page 2

OLD AGE PENSIONS. BRITISH PROPOSALS.

AN EXPERTS OPINION, In December, Sir Edward W. Brabroofc addressed the Society of Arts in London on the subject of old age pensions. He said that, assuming the demand for old age pensious was to be met, and that State provision or State aid jn some form would be invoked to procure them, it became a matter of pressing necessity to determine the best form for ' granting them, even if the expression "best" were taken to mean only "open to least objection." Compulsory insurance was" objectionable upon principle. It was no part of the legitimate functions of a Government to compel people to be provident in its own way, or to , dictate to people what method of making provision for the future they should adopt. Pensions must be raised by "contributions." Why, therefore, should they b% universal? It was supposed that people entertained some sentimental objection to accept a pension when an equal pension waa not granted to everybody eke. Ihere must be at one end of the scale a number of persons to whom a pension ' ,of the small amount proposed would be of no use, and at Ihe other end a number of persons to whom such a pension wpuld be a real injury. Why should the State insist upon paying t? the foimer class a pension which they did not want; and to the latter claes a pension which ' they would certainly misuse? If the plan adopted was to be universal, non-contributory,« and non-dis-criminatory, the Chancellor of the Exchequer must find him out some means of providing £34,000,000 a year, and more as time went _on. No form of direct taxation— which must be tho mainstay of the finances— could produce £34,000,000 a year without serious interference with economic condition?. The proposal, which he believed to be tho only .practicable one left .every 'man and woman .absolutely free to accept, or reject the offer of Government assistance, m enabling them, to provide fpr themselves, at once securely and cheaply, just such an old age ( pension as -they might deem suitable to their wants. The proposal was simply to take payments for insuring an old age pension, "and to: accumulate stich payments . during \the whole continuance of such ,insur- ' ance at a .rate of interest exceeding that earned by the Government on .the raonej'. He took for example -the .case of a man who, beginning at the age of 20, contributed £1 a year for a pension to begin when he reached the age of 65. The sum of £1 a year was only a little over 4d a week, or two-thiTds of a penny a doy-rone-thirdr of the cost of a pint of beer a. day. Yet, if the Government earned only three per cent, on its investments ana Parliament* voted nothing, that £1 would ensure a pension of 8s a week after 65. , If Parliament voted 1 per cent, extra, raising the rate of interest to 4 per cent. , the , pension would be lls 4d a week. If the pension were not* to begin until, he was 70 years of age, it would be at 3 per cent. 16s 2d a week, and at 4 per cent. £1 3s 8d a week. »^