ECONOMIC PLANNING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21596, 14 September 1933, Page 13

ECONOMIC PLANNING

CONTROL OVER INDUSTRY

THE INTERNATIONAL ASPECT

The case for economic planning on international lines was outlined by Mr. H. R. Rodwell, of the Auckland University College staff, in an address before the Auckland branch of the Economic Society of. Australia and New Zealand in the University College Hall last evening. Dr. E. P. Neale presided. Mr. Rodwell said the events of the past dfew years had focussed attention on thd) "planlessness" of the present economic order, and perhaps the, most striking feature of the industrial system was that it was not a system at all. One of the most hopeful signs today was that men were beginning to examine critically every existing institution and the foundation on which it rested. Economic planning on a national basis could ensure that the proper balance between different lines of economic activity would be maintained. Thus would be avoided those disastrous periods of depression in. particular industries that followed over-expansion.

It was not enough that particular industries should be rationalised independently of one another. There had to be rationalisation of the rationalised industries, and that was what economic planning on a comprehensive scale really meant. The planning of economic activity as a whole was absolutely necessary. "I do not regard a planned economy as a system that can suddenly be put into effect, completely worked out in all its details," said Mr. Rodwell. "Economic planning is the inevitable result of the development of industry. The machinery of the State is not suited to assume the task of regulating industry as a whole, but there are already many cases of industrial co-operation on a vast scale, and this is tho method by means of which planning over the whole field of industry will develop. "International economic planning naturally presents problems of * very much greater magnitude, but for national planning to be successful international co-operation is essential. National isolation is to-day simply an impossibility."