DOLE FOR AMERICA

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 119, 4 May 1934, Page 10

DOLE FOR AMERICA

President Roosevelt’s Bill UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE President Roosevelt has urged Congress to pass an Unemployment Insurance Bill, which aims to establish a systematised “dole” along the lines of the British legislation. The legislation induces States to establish their own unemployment insurance scheme. It provides for a 5 per cent Federal tax on employers’ payrolls, but permits, as credits on such payments, the amounts employers contribute to State funds for the purpose. The bill applies to all employers of ten or more persons, and to all such employees, except farm labourers, domestic servants, railroad employees (who have pension rights), and a few minor cases. In expressing the hope that the bill will be passed at this session, Mr. Roosevelt said the general principles of the measure “seem to me sound and the effect sought a necessary one for recovery and prevention of future economic crises.” “For a long time I have advocated unemployment insurance as an esential part of our programme to buiM a more ample and secure life. The loss of a job brings discouragement and privation to the individual worker and his family. If an insurance or reserve fund has been accumulated, even a small payment from it at such a critical time will tide over the worker and keep up hig morale and purchasing power. A FORESEEABLE LOSS. “The benefits of such a system will not be limited to the individual, however, but will extend throughout our social and financial fabric. We have in the past relied almost entirely upon private charities and public treasuries to sustain the cost of seasonal and intermittent unemployment. This is a practice that necessity will compel us to change to a very substantial degree. There is no reason why they should assume the entire burden of meeting a foreseeable loss, the major cost of which ought to he computed and borno like every other cost of business. “Of course, unemployment insurance nloue will not make unnecessary all relief for all people oat of work for tho entire period of a major economic depression, but it is my confident belief that such funds will, by maintaining the purchasing power of those temporarily out of work, act as a stabilising device in our economic structure and ns a method of retarding tho rapid downward spiral curve and the onset of severe economic crisis. “I am interested to see that the Bill seeks to promote unemployment insurance under State rather than national laws. This is aa approach with which

I agree, and which fulfills the promise of the Democratic platform for 1932 to favour ‘unemployment, insurance under State laws.’ Tho States are peculiarly equipped to administer legislation of this type, and the recent efforts of this administftit.ion in such a closely-allied field as the creation of public employment offices have been along this line. A REVENUE MEASURE. “The bill has another advantage in establishing a suitable relation of (he National Government to unemployment insurance. Under our Government. the task of caring for the unemployed falls primarily on the States. If a State cannot bear the burden, the United States must be prepared to do so, and to collect revenue for that purpose. That is why this Bill ,i s properly considered a revenue measure. But if a State, by requiring local industries to contribute to unemployment reserves, has cared for its needy and .".voided a strain upon the Federal Treasury, such contributions ought to be deductible from Federal taxes.”