THE EFFORTS TO ECONOMISE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 210, 6 August 1931, Page 6

THE EFFORTS TO ECONOMISE.

As the United Government are budgeting for an increased expenditure of £55,739 during the current year it is difficult to understand how the general public can take their economy cry seriously. The great majority of wage earners in this Dominion will be earning somewhere about £5 per week—but many will be receiving less. These people must view with consternation the everincreasing cost of administration which is now being impressed upon them by the new taxation—both direct and indirect. The Government have made many .professions about economising; they have done so in some directions, but in others the expenditure has been increased. Those bearing the burden —and who is not?—have a right to ask if the extensions of social services cannot be halted until traders, producers and wage earners alike are in a position to bear the increased costs. The heavy extra income tax imposts will be paid this year on last year’s incomes and net profits, whereas the taxpayers will have decreased incomes and profits. In some cases the decreases will have reached vanishing point—and may have passed it. The levies on these will have to be met, however impecunious the taxpayers may now be, unless they seek the refuge, afforded by the official assignee in bankruptcy. The extra imposts coming as they do during a period of adversity will be tremendously oppressive in many cases. The necessity for balancing the Budget is not disputed; the means of attaining that end are. Some relief could be afforded by applying the pruning knife to bureaucratic control and the reduction of government by regulation, a process of control that must, in the aggregate, be very expensive to taxpayers. Unfortunately much of the public expenditure in this Dominion is beyond the control of Parliament; the annual appropriations only being subject to the salutary influence of detailed criticism from this source. If Ministers desire to have their economy efforts taken more seriously they should prove that they are in reality practising economy as well as. preaching it. Curtailing expenditure in one direction and expanding it in others is not real economy.