LABOUR’S POLICY.

Evening Star, Issue 22366, 16 June 1936, Page 6

LABOUR’S POLICY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In your editorial on the above vou stress the point that some in our midst still await the Government’s reply to the question, “ Where is the money to come from?” with which to implement the policy sponsored by the present Administration. Among those who have taken the trouble to study monetary matters with an unprejudiced mind this question provokes either laughter or tears at the apparent impossibility of making others understand a few simple facts attested to by the monetary authorities themselves. The money with which to carry out the Government s monetary policy will come from exactly the same source as would the millions with which to wage a war should one break out to-morrow —out of tho paper and ink of the banking mechanism. We have yet to hear a cry asking “ Where is the money to come fromr in regard to waging war. There is no need to worry concerning that _ money which has the preservation of life and the spread of happiness. Indeed, there is less need for concern now in view of the Labour Government’s taking over of the Reserve Bank, with power to obtain unlimited credit of debt-free money. Up till now all credit, or money, used, whether in waging a war or in the saving of life, meant the people going into debt to a private business, with the resultant mountains of debt which crush tho world to-day. In this country, in future, we will have money or credits provided in exactly the same way as heretofore, but with an altogether different and beneficial, rathef than hopeless, result. There is one other point deserving comment. I refer to your concluding three words, “ immutable economic laws.” Now, if there is one thing more indisputable than all else in economics it is that the monetary system under which we live is no more or less than a convention, the purpose of which is the happiness and wellbeing of the people living under it. As is the case in any other convention, it is quite capable of modification, alteration, or change whenever the people decide that it no longer serves its proper purpose. There is not and never can be anything approaching “ immutable economic law ” about the monetary system, although there are those interested parties in our midst who would have us believe that tho monetary system is in the nature of a law " Nature like the rising of the sun, or gravity, with which men could not interfere. The so-called “ laws ’ under which we live—and suffer—are the invention of men for a definite purpose. When they cease, as in the case of monetary conventions, to serve the object they were invented for they should be scrapped or adjusted till they reflect the wealtli and happiness which is now with us in fact. That the present Labour Government is doing, and

concern about tampering with conventions should not, and will not, deter it* We owe all advance to tampering with conventions of one sort or another. The real “ immutable ” law is that, which decrees change, and economics or monetary affairs come under it as does all 1 else.—l am, etc., . A. June 15.