PATRIOTIC EXHORTATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26407, 11 March 1947, Page 5

PATRIOTIC EXHORTATIONS

Value Undermined by Sectional Legislation Special Correspondent Rec. 8.30 p.m. LONDON, Mar. 10. Commertting on the forthcoming debate upon the Government’s Economic White Paper, the Economist says: “Moral appeals can sometimes work miracles, but they do not often do so in economic affaiis, where the dangers cannot easily be dramatised. The public, after repeated dostes, has acquired a high degree of immunity to patriotic exhortation. “ The Government has chosen this moment to make what can only be interpreted as a deliberate decision to prefer division of the country to its unity,” says the paper. “It has taken steps to ram its party programme through parliament by unprecedented closure powers. .So long as it continues to affront half'the nation, it undermines its moral authority to make patriotic appeals to the whole of the people.” The Economist says the touchstone of sound financial policy in Britain’s present emergency is comparatively simple. The object should be to bring together £7,000,000,000,000 of incomes and £ 6,000,000,000, of purchasable goods. Anything that cuts down the source of money incomes and raises the money value of the goods available, either by an increase in their volume or in their price, will help towards this end. There is no reason, the paper states why a strict budgetary policy should contradict what has come to be known as the ince/itive argument. A revised form of pay-as-you-earn, substitution of death duties for surtax and some replacement of direct by indirect taxes all become urgent necessities. The parmount necessity, however, is that the financial policy of the Government should assist the nation in coming to its economic senses instead of continuing to drug it with an illusion of paper wealth.