CRUCIAL PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 16, 19 July 1932, Page 12

CRUCIAL PROBLEM

MODERN GOVERNMENTS

ECONOMICS OF FUTURE

In a special article appearing in the latest issue of "Canta," the official organ of the Canterbury College Students' Association, Professor H. Belshaw, of the economies department of Auckland University College, writes as follows:—

"I do not believe that the economic problem of the future is one of technical efficiency in production. Provided that the ' right environment is developed in which productive - efficiency may function effectively, provided that technical progress is not inhibited by defects in social organisation, there is no reason why we should not be enormously better off economically in tne future than we have ever been in the past. Mr. Keynes in 'Economic Possibilities^ for pur Grandchildren,' suggests that an economic standard of life eight times.better than the present is hot an unreasonable expectation for a hundred years hence. ■ "It will be apparent that pur first job is to get out of the present mess. We may require to make very bold and unfamiliar experiments before we are able to set the streams of production going again at their old volume. The particular lesson which the crisis has forced upon .us is the need for a wise social direction of economic affairs." The article, goes.on to express a belief that the situation is not likely to, become so. desperate that we must become Communist or perish, and does not support a return to a ■ more complete "laissez-faire" attitude. CAUSES OF PAST FAILURE. The main causes of the incomplete success of social, regulation and control in the past, he ' states to be, (a) failure to formulate a' general conception of social policy in the light of which every particular problem may be evaluated; (b) failure to distinguish between the short run or primary consequences of a particular policy and the long run or secondary consequences; (c) the perversion of judgment by narrow nationalist or sectional interests; and (d) failure to devise a proper technique of regulation and ■ control. :. These problems, he says, emerge on local, national^ and internationaLplanes. The dominating problems at the time aro international in scope. Above- all things we require a'national world: policy in regard to tariffs, war debts and reparations, armaments; economy in the use- of goM, international' finance,1 and world ■ prices. ■ ■ . PROBLEM OFGfbVERNMENT. The crucial problem is likely to be one of government. Modern: democratic Parliaments are unsuited to the task,, and by reason of such ah admixture of legislative and administrative functions they-can ;neither determine policy nor carry it out so effectively as : they should. ■■ A national economic advisory council should be set up. ■ -The direction of productive effort, he concludes, will still depend largely in the decisions of individuals. Hence the ideas of the individual as to what is good to. consume .will:-stall, be of paramount importance. This is also a problem of education—the education of individual taste. The responsibilities of our teachers, our educational institutions, and our leaders of thought will be greatly increased.- ( , ■