The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, December 3rd, 1938. STANDARD OF LIVING.

Grey River Argus, 3 December 1938, Page 6

The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, December 3rd, 1938. STANDARD OF LIVING.

It" is only to be expected that, in the absence of anything else, by way of ammunition to attack the Government, the press will put the worst construction it can upon any adjustment there may be in price levels. When goods and services were at an utter discount, there were no such complaints, even though unemployment was rampant, business and industry stagnant, and the standard of living at a record low level. One critic now describes the guaran-

teed dairy price as a “wage cut.’ It is a fact, 'of course, that oui dairy producers, in spite of all the outcry, allegedly on their account befose the general election, arc to-day obtaining a better price than the oversea market ‘without the guarantee would afford. Butin asking workers to regard this in the light of a wage cut, the press is turning dog on the farmers. Does our evening contemporary want them to believe, for instance, that the Government is doing wrong in maintaining dairy produce at a payable rate.? Nobody is complaining, except the press opponents of the Government, that the guaranteed prices are a losing proposition. The middlemen, indeed, have declared dairy produce affords them little or no profit in the handling, while there is not one anti-Labour newspaper prepared to say that the dairy farmer is overpaid. Instead, , the strategem is simply to create in the public mind that impression in an underhand fashion. If it comes to a choice between good prices and wages on the one hand, and on the other hand, bad wages and bad prices, there can be no doubt which is preferable for the mass of the people. Yet a temptation which evidently cannot be resisted in certain quarters is that of proclaiming as most economical the lowest possible standard of I living and a price level based precisely on such standard. In older’ countries, inhere food and Certain

other things-are •designedly maintained at the lowest possible price, the reason is that the exploiters of labour wish to keep industrial costs at a minimum, and so enable the proletariat to exist on a pittance. It will stand to the credit of the Labour Government that it has refused to subvert the primary producer to the behests of industrial capitalism, any more than to subvert likewise the whole working class. Indeed, our primary producers can count, themselves fortunate when they make a comparison between their condition and that of their own class -ill any other country. When it can at the same time be said that this also holds good of the workers generally in New Zealand, any marginal price readjustments may be treated, not as detrimental but as helpful. They are a proof of the ability of the Dominion to readjust itself voluntarily to economic necessities. To ignore the great improvement in the condition of all classes which the past three years have witnessed, and instead fasten attention entirely on a comparison between payable and unpayable commodity prices denotes the delusion that gave rise to the great depression. That delusion is to enthrone the token of value in the place of the "reality itself, which is not mere money", hut actual wealth. It is admittedly undeniable that advantage would be taken of a general increase of purchasing power by certain interests, but the Government is ready to check profiteering, and there need be no fear that it will allow any section of the community to fall back to the penurious and poverty-stricken condition which prevailed previously. It has no intention of allowing that state of things to be ever again made the" basis of our economic-life. The provision for social security is a sore point with its- critics, whose professed sympathy with the poor is therefore open to the utmost suspicion when the standard of living is in

question. Th'e ruse adopted to hide the inconsistency is quite transparent. The workers are asked to forget that employment is available for all who are fit. that purchasing power has gone up far more than th'e cost of living-, and that the neediest people are now guaranteed against pauperism. They are asked, indeed, to compare the present with the period over three years ago, in one respect, but not in another. The comparison suggested is that of the cost, but not that of the standard, of living.