THE COST OF LIVING.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17936, 1 November 1918, Page 4

THE COST OF LIVING.

The Prime Minister yesterday announced that a sum exceeding half a million sterling would this year be granted, provided Parliament approves —'and Parliament will approve—as a war bonus/to members of the Civil Service, j There will be the usual argument concerning the "morality" of this bonus, but the plain fact of the matter is that the Government and Parliament have, by their failure to attack the probL.n at the right end, left themselves with no alternative. Parliament, of course, will say that it has asked the Ministry for a lead, and the Ministry will plead that Cabinets in other countries have been able to do nothing better than has been done here, and it is not at, all likely that any really effective policy will be adopted. So far as the Civil Service is concerned, something is done to meet war conditions, but the rest of the wage-earning public is left to shift for itself. The principle of the war bonus is unsound, because it discriminates in favour of certain sections of the community, but it is unsound still more emphatically because it accentuates the very evil it is destined to meet. Of course it is late in the day to raise this question, but, late or early, the position ought to bo fac:•'••:.■ The end of the war will bring no immediate relief, and the experience of past wars, indeed, suggests that tho trouble '.will bo intensified, because the cessation of war conditions win remove the excuse for partial remedies and palliatives. There wore only two ways in which the pressure of war expenditure could be met—by the creation of added wealth or by savings. The New Zealand policy has been to draw on the future. Loans have been rawed that will have to bo repaid out of wealth to be created in the future or by savings,in the future, and a> portion, at least, of that wealth and of those savings has gone into circulation in the Dominion, creating a prosperity for which there is no existing basis of real wealth. With a diminished supply of commodities there has been an apparent large increase in the amount of wealth available for spending, and the result has been a great and rapid increase in prices. The only course for the wage-earner whoso wages are fixed is, of course, to economise rigidly, and that policy has been forced on many people. But the Government has never made an attempt to induce economy on the part of the public. There has been no savings campaign. Spasmodic and mostly futile efforts at price-fixing have been made from time -to time, but neither by the encouragement of economy nor by the difficult alternative of price-control has the position yet been handled in a ' bold and statesmanlike manner. It is a matter of common knowledge* that people in general are living or endeavouring to live up to the old pre-war standards, and the apparent abundance of money has, in fact, induced a habil of extravagance for which the people j may have to suffer severely later on. Parliament is to be asked by 'the Cabinet to legislate on tho subject of the ! cost of living this session, but unless the root causes of the trouble are appreciated its efforts will be of small value.