SOCIAL REFORMS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 134, 8 June 1935, Page 5

SOCIAL REFORMS

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM

ENGINEERS' STUDY GROUP

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, May 13.

The mere fact that a body of British engineers have made a study of economics and intend to put forward schemes for social reforms is in itself interesting. This week they have met to present their first interim report, which indicates they, are crying, out their determination to approach economics as an engineering problem, by methods of scientific investigation, analysis, and synthesis. The Engineers' Study Group. was formed a year ago under the auspiqes of the British Science Guild. and they thus defined their starting point.

"We, as a representative group of engineers and scientific workers, are dissatisfied with the fact that the community is not enjoying a standard of living and endowed leisure commensurate with the potential advance for which' science and technology are Tesponsible, and .are meeting to discuss why the paradox arises and how " it can be solved."

The group organised into two main sections: (a) to examine present and potential production to determine what the practicable minimum standard of living could be; and (b) to examine, analyse, and ultimately criticise proposed schemes of economic reform. The latter section has now examined 24 sets of proposals. There are included the economic proposals of all the existing political parties and the new regimes in Europe and the United States; of economists (such as Keynes and Blackett); industrialists (Melchett and Macmillan); monetary reformers (Douglas and Gesell); responsible authorities (as the London Chamber of Commerce); and.others. The summaries of the schemes are presented as appendices in the report, together •with separate treatment of orthodox economics. AIMS OF XHE GROUP. Put briefly, the group seeks economic arrangements which will abolish pov» erty, lighten labour, increase leisure, deepen and widen liberty, and minimise friction.

In regard to poverty, the report states:— The first aim, abolishing, poverty, has not hitherto been found practicable. Leisure and comfort for a select minority in order that they might ex-tend-culture and knowledge and conduct the business of government has always had to be balanced by poverty for the majority. But that poverty does not appear to have previously coincided with the large-scale de« struction of material wealth. Common sense suggests that if today food and raw material can be destroyed in immense quantities owing to the lack of effective (but not lack of real) demand, the necessity for continued poverty is rapidly passing, if indeed it has not already vanished. Such a suggestion is strongly reinforced by the present prevalence of unemployment among the factors of production. This first aim seems therefore practicable, and few will argue that it is not also desirable. Having completed the first stage of their investigations by setting out the main functions the economic system should fulfil, and by an examination of 24 sets of proposals for modifying the existing system, the next step to be taken by the group will be to correlate the results obtained and decide whether certain, schemes are individually practicable, and whether, having regard to the facts of the present situation, effective advance in the direction of the aims agreed demands some combination of the proposals put forward by various schemes rather than the simple application'of any one of them.