CAUSE OF IMPROVED CONDITIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 18, 22 January 1938, Page 8

CAUSE OF IMPROVED CONDITIONS

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—ln your issue of the 20th inst. you publish a statement by Mr. W. W. Mulholland, 'president of the New Zealand Farmers' Union, under the heading "Improved outlook due to better prices; no credit to the Government." Mr. Mulholland may know something about the ramifications of the Farmers' Union or about farming; but he is certainly very hazy when he launches out into the cause of the improved outlook of conditions in this Dominion" and into national economy generally. He- states: "No action by anybody in New Zealand, including the Government, can make our export production purchase more of the world's goods on the world's markets than the world is willing to give at a particular time in exchange for what we have to sell. It is the amount of overseas goods which our export goods bring back to us that, determines our standard of living and our comforts."

! Here Mr. Mulholland has missed the [main factors of the improved outlook, 1 for the facts are that some action of somebody in New Zealand, including the1 Government, has made the amount received (by the actual producers of our export, the workers), greater, thus enabling them to purchase internally and consume moire of the goods sent in return for our exports and more of the goods and services produced in' I ternally, hence better trade and better I outlook. It is not the amount of goods 1 which "our export goods bring back to us that determines our standard of living and our comforts." 'It is our standard of living which*' determines the amount and 'nature of the goods brought in, and our standard of living is determined by pur purchasing power, or consuming power, which is (for the majority of thepeople of this Dominion); measured or governed by the-wages they, .receive, for-the production of the goods and services (internal and external) of -this Dominion. .We cannot deny Government. action Mias done something to'improve that, hence the improved outlook.—l am, etc.,

A. M. HALL.