NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20870, 12 May 1931, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

' BRITAIN'S ECONOMIC FUTURE. The essential soundness of Britain's economic situation has been affirmed by Sir Walter Layton, editor of the Economist, in a contribution to the Revue do Paris. In an analysis of tho fortunes of British trade since the war he considers at length how the country fared up to 1929. Tho crisis of 1930 ho regards as a transitory, phase which is affecting all the countries of the world. Ho takes the year 1924, the best "normal" post-war year, as his point of departure, and shows that in 1929 the national production was 11.6 per cent, greater than in 1924. Tho population during the same period increased by less than 2 per cent., but tho number of insured workers in employment increased by 6.9 per cent. These figures not only that the increase in tho working population was successfully absorbed by industry, but that a 6teady progress of improvement in the efficiency of industry was going on, since the volume of production increased moro than tho number of workers. After discussing the question of wage standards and nationalisation, Sir Walter Layton concludes that in 1929 Great Britain, in spile of many handicaps —many of which were <he direct consequence of the war—had gone far in adapting her industrial life to (ho changing times and that there is no reason to take a pessimistic view of the placo of Great Britain in tho future world economy, or to doubt that she will be able to maintain and, with the progress of the industrial arts, to increase the standard of wellbeing of her great population.

DOLES TO THE UNEMPLOYED. Among the witnesses recently examined by the Royal Commission on Unemployment Insuranco in Britain was Sir William Beveridge, director of the London School of Economics, and a recognised authority on the subject. He said tho present system of unemployment insuranco bore no resemblance at all either to the old practice of trade unions or to tho scheme of 1911, that was meant as an extension of it. Every important idea in either had gone by the board. Tho benefit had been made unlimited in time and practically divorced from tho payment of contributions. It had bocomo neither insurance nor a spreading of wages, but out-relief financed mainly by a tax on employment. Tho Insurance Fund had become indistinguishable from the national exchequer. All interest of employer or of workpeople in reducing unemployment had ( gone. Glaringly the scheme had become in many cases a means of subsidising casual industries and insufficient wages. In the past, like other defenders of unemployment insurance, lie had often had occasion to speak of "insurance popularly miscalled tho dole." Today he was afraid that it might be truer to speak of "the dole officially miscalled insurance." "Tho objection to unlimited benefit given as of right is not simply or mainly that of expense," said Sir William, "but (a) that money payments without conditions are an inadequate and demoralising way of dealing with prolonged unemployment; and (b) that the availability of such payments encourages unemployment."

GERMANY AND AUSTRIA. The projected customs union between Germany and Austria was described by Mr. W. A. >S. Itewins in a lecture at the Hon a r Law College, Ashridgc, Ducks, as the continuation of German policy as illustrated for more than 100 years in the history of the German Zollverein. There, was nothing in the convention or the protocol to which parallels could noL bo found in the long series of conventions and agreements between the different German States which marked the development of the German Zollverein during I lie nineteenth century, and these showed clearly the points which would arise in the organisation of the new Zollverein, how they would have to be met and the consequences which would iollow. How far the gradual growth of economic union might affect the political status and the political relations of the two countries was at the moment a speculative question. The German Zollverein was the precursor of the German Empire, and since economic policy was the main determining factor in relations of all States at the present lime, these two contiguous Stales must bo enormously affected by economic union; and joint action, common policies, unitary bodies for deliberation, and the ordinary necessities ot statesmanship. might sooner or later bring complete union within the sphero of practical politics. Mr. Ilewins added that a new and immensely important step had been taken in the development of the economic policy of Europe on what in the circumstances were new lines and it was necessary that British statesmen should at once tako account of it and with full deliberation act together in the interests of the British Empir#.