"GOODS AND MONEY"

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 134, 3 December 1935, Page 10

"GOODS AND MONEY"

(To the Editor.i

Sir,—l am sorry time has not permitted me. to reply to "H.J.C." sooner. The question as put was, "Can there be inflation of currency in any country wherein the total amount of money distributed from hand to hand in circulation is equal to the total amount of goods produced and distributed in that country?" "H.J.C." has thought fit to flounder away from the question into the morass of marketable values. He makes the astounding statement that "the value of goods 'at the selling point is decided by, and only, by, what the public is prepared to pay for them." He substitutes will to pay, for capacity to pay in which his appalling error is too far proved by past experience.

What he is pleased to term "hypothetical" demand has no room in the true analysis of that balanced credit and currency, which lifts equally the production, distribution, and consumption of goods within a country. Your correspondent knows not the difference between direct and relative inflation, and in face of recent years processes of inflation practised by almost all nations of the world to save themselves against unprofitable interna-tional-trading based on money values, created by buying and selling debts, his economic education is "non est." Goods for goods remain the basis of international trading but money values for ■ money values determine the amount. In defence of the present system of deflation or inflation of money on a money basis, with only a nominal relationship to go^ds, will "H.J.C." from his citadel of self-imposed infallibility tell your readers why this country should be compelled to live only on what money returns are. received after payment'of money debts and services abroad? Can he tell us why New Zealanders should be semi-starved amid plenty when we have produced and can produce over-sufficiency for all and provide employment in profitable avenues for our youths and maidens, and comfort and happiness for all ages in the community? Is it not because we are linked to a capitalistic worshipping world wherein saving money is a greater virtue than spending?

Perhaps "H.J.C." can tell us how the goods can be bought without the money. To him that hath no money nor work, prices and values have no meaning. The world must move out industrially and- commercially, gripping the opportunities afforded by scientific' inventions to a much wider world of human service—not money. Ignorance takes up one error to abandon another and prides itself most at the brink of a fall. What means "nothing at all" to "H.J.C." today will be a world-wide practical fact within ♦Tie next few years. This is my final reply.—l am, etc.,

JOHN TUCKER, Trades Hall.