INTERNAL LOAN PLAN

Taranaki Daily News, 6 April 1932, Page 5

INTERNAL LOAN PLAN

ALTERNATIVE TO WAGES TAX. PROVISION FOR UNEMPLOYMENT. Au important suggestion, made by Mr. H. T. Goldie, president of the Auckland Rotary. Club, is that the unemployment difficulty should be met by raising an internal loan of £3,000,000 instead of increasing the wages tax to Is in the pound. This, he considers, is too heavy an imposition on an already heavilyburdened community. To pay for the loan an unemployment insurance scheme •should immediately be formulated to. take from employees and employers sufficient to. provide interest and sinking fund. • °

It would, have been much better, in Mr. Goldie’s opinion, had such an insurance fund been set up years ago, when the Dominion was prosperous, so that it might have been now available, but evep so, he does not think it is too late to begin it now. Simple calculations show that such a scheme would make for lighter demands than the-Is in the pound wages tax now proposed. The Government. estimates that the wages tax will produce £3,000,.000 annually. On the same basis, Mr. Goldie calculates, a levy of Id in the pound would give £250,000, or sufficient to provide interest at 6 per cent.,, absorbing £lBO,OOO, and £70,000 for sinking fund. A levy of 2d, or at the present rate of 3d, would make the fund correspondingly stronger and leave a wide margin for building up a substantial permanent fund.

In view of the prospect it offers of avoiding' further heavy imposts, Air. Goldie is confident that the loan would be readily subscribed, so long as satis-

factory interest and sinking fund were provided. , ; « As far as work for the unemployed was concerned, Mr. Goldie said there were ■ the schemes which business men had proposed’ three or four years ago, such as the making of roads to backblocks farms, the opening up of .land for settlement and assisting farmers to improve their properties. All these were now being put in hand and steps had also been taken by charitable organisations to co-ordinate their work so as to avoid . overlapping and eliminate

“parasites.” All these were moves'in the right direction and would contribute toward meeting the crisis,.successfully.