TO COAX PROSPERITY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17951, 1 December 1932, Page 2

TO COAX PROSPERITY

ECONOMISTS’ VIEWS PRIVATE ECONOMY MUST END LONDON, Oct. 20. The public must spend its money. To restore national prosperity and increase employment there must be an end of private economy. This, in effect, is the verdict of six leading British economists, who, in letters to the London Times, indicate that they have ceased preaching economy and have become spendthrifts." It is doubtful whether six such notable men of world economics ever before have been in agreement on any single subject. Their names are Prof. David 11. MacGregor, of Oxford, Prof. Arthur G. Pigou, of Gambridge, J. M. Keynes, Sir Walter Layton, Sir Arthur Salter and Sir Josiah Stamp. Urging abandonment of that form of war-time economy .which had as its purpose the freeing of man-power, machine power and shipping power for tho service of the State, they declare.: “Conduct in matters of economy is governed by a complex of motives. 'Some people doubtless arc stinting (their consumption because their incomes are diminished and they cannot spend as much as usual, others because their incomes are expected to diminish and they daren’t do_ so. What, it is in any .individual’s private interest to do and what weight he ought to assign to that private interest, against public interest when the two cinfliet, is not for iis to judge. But one thing is in our opinion clear, ’’he public interest in the present eonlition does not point to private economy. To spend less money than we should like to do isn’t patriotic.”