UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20520, 22 March 1930, Page 14

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE.

Sir,—Perhaps Mr. Mcßrine will contribute to a better understanding of the committee's proposals if he will explain how it proposed the board would spend its annual revenue of £1,000,000. At, what figures did it estimate the annual cost of administration and of sustenance allowances, and to what purposes would the balance be applied. These points, so far as I can discover, are not answered in the report. Inquirer.

Sir, —May I be permitted to compliment Mr. Mcßrine on his very able and lucid statement of the case for unemployment insurance. But after all, good pleading does not mako an utterly bad case into a good one. In your issue of Wednesday Mr. Mcßrine says: "His plight as an unemployed person is not . . . his individual business, but is the concern of society." That is the crux of the question. If Jones bo ou£ of work is it Smith's business to find him a job ? Or is it Smith's and Brown's business ? Or is it the business of all his fellow citizens? I say it is not. Once you get away from the position that it is every man's duty to find his own opportunities in life you flounder out into rough water—and the water is certain soon to get so rough as to bring tho Ship of State to wreck. Once it is conceded that a citizen may sit down in the shade and become entitled to comfortable maintenance at the expense of others by merely declaring that he is ready to do work if it is provided, collapse and ruin of the State is inevitable. This so-called insurance is, anyhow, nothing but unadulterated charity—to call it insurance is only juggling with words. But, indeed, any form of insurance is a national loss. Marine insurance greatly increases the number of shipwrecks. Fire insurance probably doubles the losses by fire. Unemployment insurance increases unemployment out of sight. Tho risks are absolutely incalculable, and no private individual or corporation while in its right mind would undertake the business. Why then should all the citizens be compelled to enter into it in their corporate capacity, "the .Government?" And besides the increased losses I have indicated, arising from insurance, there is the loss of capital and labour consumed in the conduct of the business. In England a heavy proportion of the unemployment fund is exhausted in the provision of comfortable billets lor multitudes of civil servants—and these may confidently be trusted never to allow "unemployment insurance" to cease or diminish if they can help it. It is idle for Mr. Mcßrine to attempt to deny this. Anyhow, why should everything be insured? Are we no longer "game" to take the risks of life ? This miserable, cowardly j policy of "safety first" will surely lead us j to decadence and ultimate ruin. What has won England her greatness ? Enterprise—adventure—her merchant adven- J turers and her gentlemen adventurers, j Those prepared to risk fortune, and, if necessary, life itself—not those looking for a chance of ekeing out a miserable existence by leaning on their fellows. E. Earle Vaile.