Greymouth Evening Star. SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1949. Pensions And The Budget

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 August 1949, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1949. Pensions And The Budget

IN the past year the majority of workers * under awards had their wages raised by amounts ranging from 10s to 15s a week. The Government, in its Budget introduced by Mr Nash in the House of Representatives on Thursdays night, increased the weekly payments to age beneficiaries, war and other pensioners by ss. a week. The contrast requires no emphasis. If the rise in the cost of living warranted a wage increase up to 15s, it surely follows that the . people who depend on Social Security for the means of subsistence have not been justly treated by the Government. The great majority of these are people who have served their country well, either on foreign battlefields or as pioneer workers in building the foundations of this country’s economic progress. Taxation is certainly at record levels, but there would undoubtedly be to the payers some consolation in the knowledge that part of their money was being expended on benefits of merit—to keep disabled servicemen and pioneer workers at subsistence level at least, if not well above it. Another section of the community, and a large section at that, has received no relief either from the taxation burden or the rise in the cost of living. People on fixed incomes, including superannuitants, State and private, have had to bear the effects of cruel inflation, and have been provided with little or no opportunity for improving their economic status. Many of them have to pay a penal taxation loading of one-third extra merely because they were thrifty enough during their working lives to provide,.for a steady income in their retirement and thus to guard against becoming a burden on the State in theii old' age.° Not only are they heavily taxed, not only do they have to struggle to meet the ever-rising cost of living, but they have to stand by and see the purchasing power of their savings steadily cut until now it is not much more than half of what it was 10 years ago. So far as State benefits are concerned, the Government repeatedly boasts of the increases it has granted on the rates prevailing 20 and 30 years ago. This claim quite ignores the fact that in terms of purchasing power the pound note then was worth twice its value today. Common justice, not charity, demands a fair deal for the. aged and disabled beneficiaries, the disabled servicemen and the superannuitant.