SUSTENANCE PROBLEMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 132, 1 December 1936, Page 8

SUSTENANCE PROBLEMS

Sustenance, which is nothing more lhan a euphemism for the "dole," is admittedly an unsatisfactory way of coping with the problem of unemployment. In New Zealand it has not even the virtue of the British unemployment insurance system, which does derive a large part of its revenue for the administration of relief, from industry itself, directly from the contributions of employers and employees. Thus, in theory at least, a person in employment makes provision for the time of possible unemployment. Both in Britain and in New Zealand, as elsewhere also in the world, unemployment of a part of the population, larger than in the past, seems to have become a permanent phenomenon and to have created a class of people who are able, on the bounty of the State, to maintain existence without working. The evils of the system have been most marked in Britain where never since the War has industry been able to furnish full employment for the population. New,

Zealand has had a briefer experience, but with similar results. The effect of prolonged unemployment is to make the victim usually less employable as time goes on and thus the sustenance problem becomes chronic. Raising the sustenance rates is obviously no remedy, for though it may alleviate a little the hardships of existence on sustenance, it tends to perpetuate the system. The only real remedy is employment, and this the Government sees even in its latest announcement of a rise in sustenance rates. ( The Minister of Labour (Mr. Armstrong) gives an account of what the Government is doing to find work, ancl then adds a warning to such able-bodied men as may prefer to be "voluntarily unemployed." This warning is timely and valuable.