POST-WAR COURSE

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 58, 6 September 1945, Page 6

POST-WAR COURSE

U.S. ECONOMIC PLANS

WASHINGTON, September 4. The Government had already undertaken a programme to raise the real wages of workers 40 to 50 per cent, as rapidly as possible, stated Mr. William Davis, Director of Economic Stabilisation. He said he was confident that the programme would be completed within five years. The method was to keep prices about present levels and to push up wages 50 per cent. A wage increase was essential to provide consumption of goods, which in turn would ensure a high level of employment Dr. Emerson Schmidt, director of the United States Chamber of Commerce's economic research department, told the Senate Finance Committee, which is hearing evidence on the Full Employment Bill, that American business and individuals last December owned 194,000,000,000 dollars in liquid | assets, compared with 66,000,000,000 in j 1939. As a result of this and the long pent up demand for consumer goods, he could not help but conclude that a great boom was pending which would last for several years. Accordingly, the debt-ridden Federal Government should not be saddled with new liability, largely for the sake of adding a few weeks of benefit payments and increasing payments to 25 dollars a week for displaced war workers who were already receiving, by previous standards, rather liberal allowances.