THE H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, JUNE 14th., 1932. THE PEOPLE’S SAVINGS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 153, 14 June 1932, Page 6

THE H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, JUNE 14th., 1932. THE PEOPLE’S SAVINGS.

It may not perhaps at the moment be a very happy time to descant upon savings when so little opportunity is being given for adding to them. All the same, it may not be altogether out of place to draw attention to some very striking figures that are quoted in a London cable appearing on another page of this issue and having reference to the total amount invested in the National Savings Certificates issued by the British Government. These show that during the last twenty years this amount has increased from £492 million, or £l2 a head of the population, in 1911, to £2,244 million, or £5O a head, in 1931. Put in another way, this latter total represents just about 30 per cent, of the gross National Debt of the United Kingdom, which the great majority of people regard as being wholly owing to the big Capitalists. When we come to consider that these certificates are almost entirely held by the wageearners and small-salaried employees of the country, the aggregate is really something amazing, more particularly after so many years of industrial and commercial depression. It has to be borne in mind, too, that to the same classes belong a very large proportion of the savings-bank deposits, totalling some £468 million, to say nothing of like accumulations in the hands of building, benefit, and life insurance societies and other kindred institutions.

These figures, of course, indicate a steady diffusion of the Old Country’s national wealth that, despite hard times, is going on much more rapidly than most of us realise. Here in New Zealand we have in our Post Office Investment Certificates, continually “on tap,” a State issue of very much the same nature as the British Savings Certificates. Unfortunately, however, for purposes of comparison, there is not available to us any official statement as to the amount outstanding on these, but no doubt it runs up to a goodly sum. But the figures of our savings banks probably afford the best indication of the surplus earnings of the people, and in them the deposits represent a total of some £5B million. But in this must be included a fairly large proportion of substantial sums lodged temporarily while awaiting permanent investment. Thus, as the whole amount works out at something under £4O per head of the population, it is very manifest that, in spite of the much higher scales of remuneration that have been in vogue here for many years, the per capita savings of the wageearning and small-salaried classes are much below those in the Old Country. This can scarcely mean anything other than that the “standard of living,” as we

choose to call it, has on the average been at least appreciably higher here than there. There is, however, another aspect of these big accumulations of savings that has to be considered, more especially .perhaps with regard to the Old Country figures. It may be taken that, in either case, pretty well the whole of them have been drawn out of the various industries of the country, and no one is, of course, going to begrudge them to the manual or clerical workers who have earned them. What has to be noted is the character of the investments in which they are sunk. Had these big amounts remained in the hands of the employers in the shape of profits, the very great bulk of them would have been capitalised in the way of establishing and extending industries and expanding commercial enterprises. This would have provided employment for many more hands and increased the “purchasing power” of the people at large. As it is they have been entirely diverted from these productive and reproductive channels into the insatiable maws of Government treasuries—our P.O. Savings Bank deposits are nearly all invested in Government securities—mostly for purposes that have none of that character This is, of course, no argument in favour of lower wages or lower salaries. But it does suggest that it is about time that wage and salary earners should bethink them as to whether it is not in their own interests that such savings as they can make would be much better invested in the promotion Of trade and industry. Yet it is only the ether day that the cable told us of the British Trades Union Congress “attacking schemes for co-operation with employers, because the more financial interest the workers are induced to have in their employers' undertakings the greater would be their reluctance to endanger the employers’ profitmaking activities.” This is surely a strange, not to say sinister, view to take of plans for a fairer distribution of those profits.