PROBLEM OF THE OLD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26841, 4 August 1948, Page 6

PROBLEM OF THE OLD

Sir,—l have read in the Otago Daily Times the articles by H. A. Glasson. It is most gratifying to know at last somebody is beginning to take an interest in the well-being of those people who have helped to build New Zealand, and have reared children who to-day are ‘carrying on our industries where we left off. I, on behalf of this class of people, wish to thank all those who are now showing some interest in these deserving people. I wish it to be clearly understood • that we as a class of people have not been slow in vindicating our rights. What we are striving at, and what we desire is a pension large enough so that we may be able to purchase those amenities constituting life’s makeup. We in New Zealand have a recognised standard of living. Seeing, this is so. and recognised at £5 16s for a man and wife, and not less than £3 10s single pensioners, I, as representing this class of people in Auckland, demand this status.—l am, etc..

T. H. Megnann, President, Social Security Age Pensioners’ Association. Auckland.

Sir,—l fully agree with the views expressed on this subject by " Miner " and “ Woman of Seventy-four,” except that I think it would be unwise in present conditions to enable pensioners to use social security so as to help depress the .living standards of the bread - winners. “Miner’s” view of social security as a promoter of harmony and goodwill among the people is a very happy conception, and is, perhaps, the best argument I have yet heard for the existence of social security as a national institution. The age benefit costs about half a crown per week per capita, and surely that is a very ’ cheap price to pay for so much happiness and contentment among the people who have had their day. What I meant to convey in my previous letter was that a nation that regards its old people, not as an integral pairt of the whole national structure, entitled to its share of the national substance, but as a " problem ” to be dealt with by some system of carefully measured alms-giving is living on its capital, and is without a great future. For surely it requires no little hardihood to argue, as some wiseacres do. that this present generation, after having reared and trained a new generation to take its place and spent the best part of its life in trying to make the national structure worthy of the newcomers, should be asked to accept the husks of charity in its old age, or else to act as hod-carriers for the newly-trained builders, if still able to do so. Such a policy would, I believe, be indignantly repudiated by the younger generation, for, in spite of the wiseacres, their instinct of national selfpreservation would surely warn them where it led.— l am, etc., F. R. H.