INCREASED MONEY.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLII, Issue 1736, 11 February 1921, Page 7

INCREASED MONEY.

BUT REDUCED PURCHASING POWER. Mr J. W. Mcllraith (one of the Auckland school inspectors) said at a conference in Wellington that he had been very much interested in the Minister’s statement as to the great expenditure on education in New Zealand to-day; but it should be remembered, he urged, that payments were now made in debased coin—that was to say,, in money which had a very much reduced purchasing power. He had gone into the figures, and he found that from 1900 to 1914 there was a steady increase in the purchasing power per head of the population spent in education. But from 1914 to 1918 there had been a tremendous drop in the purchasing power spent. Practically speaking, therefore, less, not more, per head was being spent on education than in 1900. It was only during the last two years that the expenditure on education, measured by purchasing power, had been going up. (Applause.) Since 1900, however, our gambling rate had mounted miles higher; and the increase in the same period in the unimproved land values of the Dominion would, on a very conservative estimate, pay off our pre-war national debt twice over. (Laughter and applause.)