The Grey River Argus MONDAY, August 22, 1949. SET AGAINST LIVING STANDARD

Grey River Argus, 22 August 1949, Page 4

The Grey River Argus MONDAY, August 22, 1949. SET AGAINST LIVING STANDARD

QNE Budget critic complains that a couple receivivng £5 a week social security are better off than a couple with a farm to sell, unless the latter can obtain about £9OOO for the farm. On the same political side, however, less consistent critics are pretending the £5 weekly is insufficient, although the same critics are continually demanding that social security should in toto "be radically cut down. It is a moral certainty Labour’s enemies would not now be comparing wages and benefits with a suggestion that they ought to be on a par as regards increases, only that they wish to question wages rates. No doubt, there is also the ulterior motive of creating dissatisfaction among the beneficaries in view of the coming elections. Beneficiaries may be trusted to remember how poorly they fared before Labour came into power. The Opposition elements are always talking about taxation pinching somebody or other, but they now give the show away when suggesting there should be more pinching to equate, benefit increases with wages increases. Wage-earners in a great many cases have families to provide for. whereas age beneficiaries are nearly all without this oblgation. In the same breath the critics say that they reckon 15s of a benefit increase commensuA ate with wages increase, and pro- 1 fits do not make prices high, but that the sole cause is taxation. There is no -warranty in history for the claim that capitalists will cut profits if the State cuts taxes. They exact every time the maximum margin that trade w.ll bear. Crocodile, tears over the age beneficaries are strangely incongruous with lamentations over the expenditure of £46 millions on social security, and charges that this renders goods dearer to a greater extent than t other single factor. Why do the Opposition propagandists so unanimously ignore the item of family benefits? These amount to fourteen millions, and are the means of not only increasing the population, but of rearing a healthier generation. To lament that benefits are not greater, and then to compare to-day’s expenditure on social security with that in the years from .1*930 to 1935 so as to imply there now is unnecessary taxation reveals the cloven hoof. Medical and hospital benefits require more than eight millions a year, so that when all is taken into account the social security' fund has to do a mighty big job, and one which was almost entirely ignored before the present Government’s time. While denying the justice of the outlay on social security as a whole, the Tory peeks wants to have it both ways with a complaint that the recipients cannot now obtain as much for money as could be had in the early thirties. That goes, however, for every country in the world, and if it is quoted to discredit such benefits as the Government has provided, it must, on the other hand, be held to justify the provision made for such benefits as are provided, and as were not previously provided at all. Superannuitants are stated to have found that they cannot make their money go as far as formerly, but they definitely arc better off than beneficiaries, or, if not, they at least need not rein ain any worse off. The refrain of this talk of inflation—which is incidentally coming to an end—is simply that the* Government is doing too well for the people in the way of social security,, housing, social services, and public enterprises- Were these things cut out, so as to cut down taxa-

tion,~ the propaganda of vested interests would not welcome deflation, nor a lower cost of living for the masses, but a lower standard of living. Our standard is good, just as is our standard of production.