WHAT IS MONEY?

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5598, 29 March 1943, Page 5

WHAT IS MONEY?

BASIS OF SOCIAL SECURITY EVERYONE ABLE MUST WORK The following article is from Rydge’s (an Australian journal):— We are told it takes money to fight a war. That is why we have those war loans and taxes. But this statement is a half-truth. Money itself cannot create anything. lloney cannot build guns, tanks or planes, or feed an army. Labour and material together build guns, tanks, and planes; labour and material together supply food. Our big cities, our factories, our highways, our water supply systems, our homes and our belongings in those homes, were not created out of money, but out of labour and material. Money is merely a commodity, a universal denomination, which is used to express the value of production. It enables us to compare the value of so many bushels of wheat with so many pairs of shoes and with every other conceivable commodity. In other words, money is the measuring rod which determines the manner in which the total production of a nation shall be divded among the various individuals which constitute the people of that country. CAUSE OF DEPRESSIONS If money merely performed this service it would be a helpful servant, and booms and depressions would be unnecessary. But money unfortunately operates as a restrictive master because it can be manipulated, Instead of merely being Used as a common denomination for production, it can be so powerfully controlled that it prevents men working and prevents food, clothing, and shelter being produced for which men are literally starving. The last depression proved: this; every previous depression in the history of the world has proved it. What an absurd situation! Idle factories on one side; idle, starving men on the other ! The only barrier to the idle men marching into the closed fac-tories-—money ! The only barrier to plenty—money! TRUE SOCIAL SECURITY Paying money in the form, of unemployment allowances to men out of work is not true social security. Men who contribute no production receive a share of the production of others. This is uneconomic, and if a bad depression were to ensue the burden of payments would be so groat that we could slip into an economic decline where more and more men would be losing jobs; and the very thing we needed, production of food, clothing, and shelter, would be a reducing quantity. We could quickly reach a crisis.

On the other hand, if concentration on the problem of guaranteeing work be the basis of our social security, then we can never have a depression because all the goods and food needed for our people will continue to be made, and there will be sufficient to go round for everyone in the community. There can never be a shortage if everyone is working. Paying money will never prevent a depression: production of goods alone will. THE KIND OF NEW ORDER Money cannot create anything: labour and materials together do the job. Germany, Italy, and Japan have proved this to an amazed world, many economists of which told us in the daily press that these countries were in disastrous financial straits—in fact, were on the verge of bankruptcy, and had no money with which to fight a war. How they misled us ! If in the new order after the war everyone is guaranteed a job, permitted to produce goods, then prosperity is ahead for every worker, every business man, every person in the community. There can. be no scarcity for anyone when the fruits of the labour of all are available for division amongst the people. So, once again, even though it is repetition, let our social security be based upon a guarantee of a job for everyone of us—be based upon the production of a full nation at work.