COST OF THE DOLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20950, 13 August 1931, Page 8

COST OF THE DOLE.

Million pounds a week. BRITISH SYSTEM CONDEMNED. -0- 9 INDUSTRIAL MACHINE CRIPPLED. " Theie can be no ffuestion but that nilr extravagance on unemployment insurance is crippling, our whole industrial machine," declares Mr. John Buchan, M.P., in a trenchant article in the London Graphic, in which he points out that Britain has been borrowing for that purpose at a rate of over £1,000,000 a week, and that the Labour Government had recently asked Parliament to increase the amount borrowed from £90,000,000 to £115,000,000 —a sum which, if the numbers of the unemployed approach the 3,000,000 mark, will be exhausted by October. '' Lot it be readily-granted," says Mr. Buchan, " that we have had substantial returns for our outlay, since it has kept the nation going in a critical time. But an emergency measure ceases to have merits when it prevents the passing of the emergency which it is designed to relieve. By helping lame dogs over stiles wo are keeping back the active hounds. The rate of benefit has grown steadily since 1920, although since 1921 the cost of living has fallen. We have pegged in the wrong- way the wrong kind of wages. " One result is that our extravagance on unemployment insurance has brought about an inelastic system of wage levels, and this has reacted mischievously upon the export industries which are the basis of our livelihood. Before the war it was these export industries which determined wage levels, since they were sensitive to .world conditions. To-day wage levels are settled altogether apart from our exports, with the result that there is not that natural adjustment which a healthy demands. We live in a competitive world, and the industry which cannot adapt itself to competition is /doomed. And yet we have deprived ourselves of the means of that adjustment." Mr. Buchan declares that a large part of the Government has the dole mind, and favours, maintenance, not insurance. /"The trade unions have a fantastic scheme for putting the whole cost on the income tax," he says. /" The Left Wing seems to regard the dole as a permanent institution, a logical element in wages. That, ab any rate, is a clear issue which must ba fought out. On one side will be those who think there is somewhere an inexhaustible reservoir of wealth, on which benevolence can draw in defiance of economic laws. On the other will be those who believe the only way to safeguard our traditional standard of living and our social services is by an immediate demand for discipline and sacrifice from every class, and who regard the dole mind as jtsulting inevitably in the servile State."