INCREASED PROSPERITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 70, 24 March 1937, Page 8

INCREASED PROSPERITY

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Regarding an item in tonight's "Post" in which the Hon. H. T. Armstrong states that there has been an increase of £14,000,000 in the wages paid to the workers of New Zealand in one year, and giving this -as the reason for the increased prosperity of the country generally, does the hon. gentleman think workers are not able to think things out for themselves? Give the Labour Government all credit for the many improvements they .have made in the workers' lives, but don't ask to swallow the one about increased prosperity being all due to increased wages. This country is and wilj be—until we have sufficient population to absorb the goods—entirely dependent on our export trade. The fact that we are enjoying better times is due to the fact that the whole world is enjoying prosperity to a greater extent. Does the hon. gentleman claim that the legislation brought in by. his party is responsible for the flourishing year Australia has "had?

The Minister. also mentions the increased purchasing power of the worker. Let me inform him that due to the same legislation the worker's £1 will now only buy roughly 75 per cent, of what it would before. Regarding the final part of the Minister's speech, we do not have to thank the said legislation for the tens of thousands of additional hands employed, but we do have to thank it for the new trade it has made—that of the person who is just too lazy to work and is fostered and looked after very nicely by legislation. Here I might pause to apologise to the person . who is still genuine in his or her attempt to find work, but I can ' definitely state that on two occasions recently I have offered employment to two persons to be told that they preferred sustenance.

In finishing, might I ask just one thing: Seeing that everybody is flourishing, the Government coffers must be taxed to their fullest capacity to hold all the increased taxation that surely must be coming in. Is it not time that the Government honoured at least one of its promised reforms— the sales tax—which the Prime Minister said after he had been elected would be the first to go? The Government has now had over one year to keep that promise, In a little over a year Mr. Savage will be asking us to support his party. I trust that these few facts will start a few other workers thinking for themselves.—l am, etc.,

WORKING PARTNER.