SOCIAL SECURITY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5599, 31 March 1943, Page 2

SOCIAL SECURITY

SCHEME IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTRAST WITH BRITISH PROPOSAL

(By A. D. Rothman, Staff Correspondent in Washington of the Sydney Morning Herald) Analysis of the report of the National Resources Planning Board and the British Beveridge report shows that the ground covered by the latter is only part of that covered by the former, which stretches across almost all fields of economic and social activity. It is as if you had two maps of equal size, one showing one continent in the greatest detail and the other the whole world in lesser detail.

If you superimposed a map of the special continent on a similar land area in the world map it would give you something of the feeling you have when studying the two reports. The philosophy of the two reports is similar, namely, a plan to assure the fruits of victory on the home front. Their general concepts are similar, namely, the security, health, and opportunity for work of the people of each country. The Beveridge report offers a specific programme for income, maintenance, and general recommendations for health; the N.R.P.B. contains detailed programmes for the public provision of work and a detailed youth programme. Both provide against unemployment, old age, disability, and loss of the bread-winner. The Beveridge report provides also for funeral expenses and certain costs of child-bearing and rearing. Both provide social insurance and general public assistance. The N.R.P.B. provides, in addition, work for the employables. TAX CONTRIBUTIONS Both plans provide social security benefits to about the same population groups.. Both provide public assistance to all persons whose benefits from social security on their wages are not sufficiently large, and both disqualify persons who have not paid social insurance premiums or have refused to accept suitable jobs. The reports vary on the basis on which insurance benefits will be paid. While the American benefits would probably be larger monetary, it is hard to say whether they would bu\v more. Allowances under both reports will vary according to individual cases. Both provide for the financing of a social security programme from tax contributions by workers and employers and by national tax funds. The Beveridge report provides for administration by the national Government. The N.R.P.B. includes the State also, and provides a penalty in the mechanism under which the Federal Government can enter the State and administer its share of the system.

The most controversial features of the N.R.P.B. report consist of two plans—for the transition from war to peace and for the development of expanding economy through the co-oper-ation of the Government and private enterprise.

The first plan calls for an agreement on legislation and administration for a transition period now with adjustment to considerations of military strategy. It warns against war weariness and “back-to-normal” cries at the end of the fighting. DEMOBILISATION OF FORCES It calls for a careful planning now for the demobilisation of the armed forces, the programmes of vocational education, and re-education, aimed at putting demobilised servicemen back to work with a minimum loss of time. It claims that the demobilisation of civilian employees in war industries should be accompanied by the engagement of those workers on public works where necessary. It urges that plans for demobilisation must take precedence over longer range objectives, because the ability to meet the immediate post-war situation wisely will determine whether we shall have the opportunity of pursuing orderly progress to our long-range goal. The United States plan also provides for the demobilisation of war plants, machines, and war contracts. This includes the orderly disposal of Govern-ment-owned plants to private operators who are prepared to turn them to peace-time use with safety provisions against monopoly control; for a more desirable regional distribution of plants from the national defence viewpoint; for technical assistance to operators to find the most appropriate peace-time use of plants, including lions, grants, and Government orders for peace-time equipment; for the continuation of certain war-time con-

tracts needed for the maintenance of military forces for experimental production, and for improved military equipment for requirements under existing lend-lease arrangements. This plan recommends the demobilisation of war-time regulations which limit production of certain goods, but states that consumer goods rationing will probably have to be continued. PRIVATE ENTERPRISE Measures are suggested for the stimulation of “the healthy and aggressive development of private enterprise,” with the elimination of unnecessary laws affecting enterprise, but with controls against monopoly or the waste of national resources. Charges in the fiscal and monetary policy of the Federal Government are recommended. These include international collaboration to pursue internal policies designed to promote active employment and implement ways and means to open outlets for foreign investments, to promote world trade, and the effective world-wide use of productive resources. The plan also suggests “the preparation after the war of expanded programmes of development and for the construction of physical facilities,” including Government and private combined ownership and management of housing, transportation, power development, and the removal of slums and obsolescent plants and their replacement; extensive urban planning, and the creation of the requisite agencies, in which the Federal Government will participate.

The plan places great emphasis on the development by the Federal Government of aid to electric power and water resource development. Land development projects also are emphasised. Housing and public works are repeatedly emphasised in almost every division of the report. The feature of the entire report which is most likely to arouse opposition is the provision for Government and private combined ownership and management in some plants and facilities, with the Government deciding what concerns should be left to operate in such fields as aircraft, shipbuilding, aluminium, magnesium, and other base metals, synthetic rubber, and some other chemicals. NEW “BILL OF RIGHTS” In some sectors of economy it is suggested public interest may be served better by the use of mixed corporations than by either wholly private enterprise or outright Government ownership. The report instances outstanding examples of mixed corporations in Britain and the Dominions, like the South African Iron and Steel Corporation, the Imperial Airways, and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The report concludes with the following remarkable “new bill of rights” for America after the war:— (1) The right to work usefully and creatively. (2) The right to fair pay adequate to command the necessities and amenities of life in exchange for work, ideas, thrift, and other socially valuable service.

(3) The right to adequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical care. (4) The right to security with freedom from fear of old age, want, dependency, sickness, unemployment, and accident.

(5) The right to live in a system of free enterprise, free from compulsory labour, not responsible to private power, arbitrary public authority, and unregulated monopolies. (6) The right to come and go, to speak or be silent, free from spying or from secret political force. (7) The right to equality before the law with equal access to justice.

(8) The right to education, for work, citizenship, and personal growth and happiness. (9) The right to rest, recreation, and adventure, and the opportunity to enjoy and share in advancing civilisation.