Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, THURSDAY, MAY 8, 1924. UNIVERSAL "ALL-IN" INSURANCE.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16425, 8 May 1924, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, THURSDAY, MAY 8, 1924. UNIVERSAL "ALL-IN" INSURANCE.

The average person in New Zealand \hm not got great possessions. The lalrge body of wage earners, manual or clerical, fating the. ordinary vicissitudes of life, have mo reasonable expectation of doing more, over their working years, than just paying their way. They may, if thrifty, belong to lodges or provide for Government! superannuation (benefits. But doing the best possible, every such worker must, at times, lituve uneasy moments, as to. whaifc is to happen when t'he few years of working capacity are exhausted ; whtm the enfeebled muscle or brain sets a', nwtti hack, a; derelict upon the salads of time, and when bis place is taken by the more fit and younger life of his day. Hie very young, full of heailthy power and ambition, eager to take their place in actual life, and to aid those from whom they have sprung, may forget. But even to these at times must come that dark spectre of anxiety as "to what will be "when the evil days eomo, et.ncl ithe years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." Young women may look at things rather differently. Why shonlld they bother? AJI an good time, when they have had their fling, they will accept the handkerchief, thrown in their direction, amd tJhe burden of the future wti'll rest upon other shoulders. This, which may serve in vision to lay aside care for the future, does not find justification in result. Many a married woman, keeping up ai smiling face, hides, from others, the anxiety which is there iaill the time as she watches the failing health of the burden-bearer and tho growth of the young children to so great, an extent dependent upon one failing main's strength. Then there are the women, even in New Zealand, to whom no handkerchief is thrown.; who find themselves in middle age with nothing certalim but this—that their powers will decay. If, as is so often the case-, there is no provision for that time, hope dies, and 1 that independence which they have mada so brave a struggle to maintain fails them at. the last. In New ZeaJand, since 1882, when Major Atkinson brought forward a general scheme for National insurance, a number of detached govern, mont effoilts b:a,vei been made to deal with incapacity amd unemployment. There is the 'pension system, general and special, and 1 sundry superannuation schemes; somo obligatory, and some voluntary. As to the superannuation schemes, there is reason to doubt whether the schemes are self-supporting, or are dependent for their continuance upon irregular contributions from the public purse. The main Pensions Act has this intolerable blot, that it is a. direct discouragement to thrift, in that a. man's savings are taken as against him in adjusting th? amount of his pension. The annual inquisition, in the endeavor, inseparable from the system, to prove that a pensioner has nothing, or has done nothing for reward, during the year, is as degrading as it is educative in idjeness and evasion. The New Zealand Pensions Act is, alter all, only a, provision for the aged. It takes no account of those who fall out. by the way before reaching the age fixed by the statute. Major Atkinson's scheme was founded upon one proposed by Mr. Black!ey in England. The idea-, roughly, was that every person should in early years make a: contribution upon a calculated scale, entitling him as of right to certain benefits when incapacitated by 'any cause. The opposition to the scheme in, 1882 was not so much based upon want of merit as upon l am idea, natural to the heated political atmosphere of that day, that it was ah effort to freei land from legitimate burdens and plaice those burdens upon t'iie whole people; in fact to make every young person contribute a; substantial sum out of the early annual eainnings, in relief of the landowner, who, it was contended, should bear the whole burden of charitable laid in the form of rates and taxes. Iu those days Henry George was the prophet and John Stuart Mill the high priest of political economy. The doctrines of the,new cult were a necessary corrective at the* time. They were accepted perhaps too readily. 'it was not,seen that land, equally with all other property, was liable to one law —that it was a lawful possession, but its owner? ship was always subject to respect for the lights of others. Land was' held to he sacred'. It was regarded, as, if not quite the source of life, at least as being life's maintenance!. It was to be classed with the air and the water, as the common heritage of afll. To be a landowner was to be a person suspect. The undoubted abuses of the past in the early history of the land administrations of the young settlement were regarded as being always liable to be repeated. Now it is evident enough that land by the regulation of taxation can be made to bear all the burdens which economically it. can vstand, for the' general benefit of the public revenue, without casting upon it any particular responsibility for a particular service. So now 42 yeairs (lifter Mr. BHackley originated and Major Atkinson followed, ' we find all three political parties at Home almost in rivalry as to which may get the credit of carrying through much the same proposal for Great Britain, other than Ireland, which now-a-days Hooks after itself, in sec.tiions. Universal all-in insurance is now welcomed and it is suggested, that as ho one party can carry any thing alone, oill parties should unite to give this great blessing to the people. The present burdens in the administration of the poor law, pension funds, nnd all kinds of aids for relief of distress, aire nti breaking point, while unemployment ia not checked, but rather increased. In some cases it pays better to be idle than (to work. The systems are so bad that they are extending the evil that they were established to reduce. It is at leaist possible that what it known as thei 'Broad universal insurance schema' will he fully considered , by representatives of the three political parties, and, as it is, or in some anproved form, will be passed into law. What a tremendous thing this is can ben seen by the fact that under its provisions 1,000,000 persons woufld at once retire from service upon pensions, and the unemployment problem, as it exists now, would bo solved. We cannot here deal with the details of the sysitem which has obtained much general approval from Great Britain. Tt must suffice to mention the rates of the contributions and the benefits. This cam only be dona very cursorily. The

contributions by women would be Is per week, by men Is 6d, by employers 2s 6d, by the State Is. The benefits would be: Sickness, women 20s, man 30s; disablement, women 20s, men 30s; unemployment, women 20s, men 30s ; pensions* women 20s, men 30s; widows 12s 6d; children ss; medical benefits, same in both classes. Under this scheme the poor Haw goes for ever. The present contributions for health and unemployment insurances are, women lid per week; men Is 2d ; employers Is 3d ; the State 9d. The scheme would protect 4,500,000 contributing women and 12,500,000 contributing men. An idea 1 ! system for national relief must be one from which benefits for the individual flow ;<s the natural result in part of his javn conscious effort. Any plan, which falls short of this, perpetuates pauperism, for it discourages personal effort land saps personal independence. The contingincies for which the workers have to be protected are defined to be: — (i.) That by some dislocation of the woild-market he may bei thrown from no fault of his own out of employment; (ii.) tha* he may he temporarily disabled or permanently incapacitated by an accident or by illness; (iii.) thalt he may die in early manhood, leaving a widow and dependent children unprovided for; (iv.) thaitJ he may be incapacitated for work by the oncoming of old age." A New; Zealand public man who would coordinate our charitable aid miscellanea and produce an intelligible system of national insurance, suited to the circumstances of the country, would do much, not only for the alleviation of distress «*liid the growth of healthy independence, but would be prospecting a. road which might go iai long way, towards settling industrial unrest, and the establishment of better relations between capital and labor, i