ECONOMIC PROBLEMS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 291, 7 November 1929, Page 6

ECONOMIC PROBLEMS.

CONDITIONS IN AUSTRALIA. DEBT AND EXCESSIVE COSTS. Lecturing at KiLlara (Sydney) recently under the auspices or the University Extension Board on “Citizen-ship-—lts Problems To-day,” Sir Henry Braddon said that in the matter of world finance Australia could not possibly stand aloof, because of her wool, primary products, and mining. _ The countries of the world were interdependent, but while, during the postwar jreriod of deflation, most of them had taken in sail, Australia had clapped on every stitch of canvas, all in the face of drought possibilities, lower wool prices, and her diminished borrowing power, until now her public debt per head exceeded the public debt per head of the people of Great Britain, nnd she was burdened with the necessity of finding between £«j0,0u0,000, and £31,000,000 a year in order to pay interest on externallyraised Government and municipal debts, a largo part of which sum oould be procured only by fresh borrowing. That constituted ono artificiality, another being that connected with the basio wage, which had been raised to a level that the economics of the country could not possibly bear. Wages were being paid, not on the basis of what industry could stand, but on the cost of living; not on piecework, but on day work, which gave a similar wage to slow and quick worker alike; and they were also paid on the basis of a family unit, which gave to the bachelor what it gave to the man with a wife and family. _. In one 25-year period, continued tair Henry, it had been found that increased productiveness per man in the. United States paid two-thirds of the increased wages paid him, whereas in Australia, over the same period, the productiveness -was rather, less, hut then the American Federation of Labour would not have day-work, and the American unionist firmly recognised the importance of the sources of his country's wealth.