RESTORING THE CUTS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21806, 22 May 1934, Page 13

RESTORING THE CUTS

Sir, —As Mr. Denbv must know. I never claimed that farmers were the only parties whose rates had been increased or that the whole increase since 1914 had been absorbed by wages. My statement was, I think, sufficiently clear: As compared with 1914 rates were, in 1932, almost three times as high, the wages of local body employees and others in regular work were 41.8 per cent higher, while the export prices of pastoral products were 20 per cent below the 1914 level. Thus a proposal to restore the cuts is a proposal to take money front families that are receiving far less, for the same work, than they received in 1914 and pay it out to those who are already receiving far n.ore than they received in that year. The fact that many unfortunates are unemployed, and are thus receiving less than they received in 1914, has no application whatever as an argument for raising the pay of local body employees, as such employees are not numbered among the unemployed and nre in a very different position. The fact of unemployment is, on the contrary, the strongest argument that can be used for cutting the costs that are making the employment of labour impossible. When Sir. Denby argues that a 50 per cent cut in the pay of local body employees would necessitate fivefold' heavier rates he is scarcely helpful as a teacher. The revenue required by a local body is determined by its costs. If its labour and* other costs are reduced bv 50 per cent its revenue can also be reduced by 50 per cent. Mr. Denby should remember that a mere assertion that business would suffer from wage reductions is neither evidence nor argument. Every sixpence paid to local body employees is taken from the families who, in different ways, contribute to the funds of those bodies and no one can show that any amount of money spent by employees can be of greater benefit to business than would the same money if spent bv those who supplied it. There is, on the contrary, this vital difference: Production is now so burdened with monstrous costs that in the main it now involves losses in place of profits to producers. A reduction in wage rates and other costs by diminishing these losses, or removing them, would assist producers in carrying on the essential work of the Dominion, whereas an increase in costs, by increasing their losses, would make the position of producers impossible and thus involve tho Dominion in ruin. In conclusion, I have never abused our local bodies. 1 have merely said that rubbish is now being presented to us as new economics and that is a legitimate statement. A. Clodhopper*