BRITISH PEOPLE

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 228, 26 August 1929, Page 7

BRITISH PEOPLE

SPENDING POWER GREATER.

MORE LEISURE AND AMUSEMENT PARADOX EXPLAINED. (United Press Association. —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Australian Press Association.) Received August 26. 11.5 a.m. LONDON, Aug. 25. The Westminster Bank Review contains an interesting article on the subject of pre-war and post-war spending. The writer states that nothing tends more gravely to perplex the serious observer of contemporary British social life than the paradox of continuous industrial depression on the one hand and increased popular spending on the other. “Coal mines are closed or partially closed, cotton mills are working short time, and appalling statistics of unemployment are published, yet there is evidence of the spending power of the country being greater than ever. “Not only are vast sums spent on amusement, but there is greater leisure for the people to enjoy pleasures. Motor cars crowd the streets, with evidence that such cars by no means belong exclusively to the wealthy class; the people are better clothed and the standard of life has generally been raised.”

The writer finds the chief explanation of this paradox in the great change which has atken place since the war in the actual distribution of wealth, in other words, through the redistribution of wealth the spending power of the mass of the community has been vastly increased. This redistribution not merely consists of higher wages, but of enormous taxation of large incomes and estates, which provides for large Government expenditure.