DOUGLAS CREDIT SCHEME

Evening Post, Issue 122, 26 May 1933, Page 3

DOUGLAS CREDIT SCHEME

An interesting address was given last evening in the Dominion Farmers' Institute by Mr. Allen Allardyce, Dominion secretary of the Douglas Movement, who is returning ■to Christchurch after a successful tour of the North Island. Mr. Allardyce spoke for nearly two hours. After reviewing, the conditions in the world today, he. criticised the contradictory advice which had been given by the so-called "experts," and demonstrated the fact that the fundamental cause was a chronic deficiency of purchasing power. The amount released in the form of wages, salaries) and dividends was never sufficient to buy all the goods for sale, and the surplus could'only be disposed of by incurring further debt, by wholesale bank: ruptcy sales,, or by exporting more than we imported. This latter inevitably led to international friction. The Douglas proposals offered a sane and scientific solution, under which every man, woman, and child would be able to share in the abundance of modern production. Under the Douglas scheme" goods would be sold at a price enabling the public to buy them, because the operation of the "just price factor" would ensure that the merchant or retailer would bo compensated by the scientific issue of consumer credit. This would in effect be a free gift* but under conditions which would make inflation impossible. In answer to the question, "Where was the money coming from?" the speaker said that financial credit was a costless creation by the bariksi simply a transferring of figures from one; account to another, only 5s in every £100 of business being done by notes Or coin. At present the banks had the monopoly of the creation of and destruction of money. Under Douglas credit the supply1 of money would be regulated by the volume of goods for sale, not the volume of goods by the supply of money. The national dividend would ensure that- those thrown out of work through- labour-saving machinery would become sharers in the increase of real wealth. At the conclusion of the address the speaker answered a number of questions, and was accorded a hearty vote of thanks.