INCREASING THE TAXPAYERS’ BURDEN.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21179, 28 October 1938, Page 8

INCREASING THE TAXPAYERS’ BURDEN.

Now that the financial significance of the Government’s social security scheme is being realised by taxpayers who are already being more or less severely punished through the excessive nature of the impositions of the taxgathering machine, various organisations are beginning to take stock of the wide scope of the Government’s election pledges in relation to tax-bearing capacity of the country. It is not surprising then that the presidential address at the annual conference of the Employers’ Federation of New Zealand should contain pointed reference to social security and State enterprise generally in relation to private enterprise. No one, of course, who is capable of adding two figures together believes that the Government can put its universal superannuation scheme and free medical service into operation at the cost of an extra fourpence. The slogan “all for fourpence” made a very clever electioneering appeal, but only very dull fish were caught with such gaudy-coloured bait. As the president of the New Zealand Employers’ Federation suggested in his annual address at the opening of the annual conference yesterday, the Government’s social security legislation would impose further crushing taxation on industry. Since the result of the general election polling has been made known, there has been no attempt to convince the people that the implementation of the social security scheme will cost the individual only another fourpence in the £. But the weakness of the scheme is not wholly financial and economic. When it is realised that one high authority in Britain has estimated that between 1931 and 1951 the number of children in England and Wales will have fallen by 4,000,000 from 9,500,000 to 5,500,000, while those aged 45 years and over will increase by 2,500,000 some idea of the problems of the future, particularly in relation to old age pensions and health scheme will be gained. This phase was taken into account by the English actuary who reported on the scheme:

“This is because British countries have been doing everything to secure comfort and prolong life and nothing to encourage birth of children on which the virility of a nation depends. Figures published by the London County Council on the drop in birthrate and of children at school confirm these estimates. The British race is on the down grade all over the world, and this is not due to crowding, for in Australia the birth-rate has fallen from 424 in 1860-64 to 16-17 now, and in New Zealand from 40 in 1875-79 to under 17 now.

If the Dominion’s vital statistics are taken into account in relation to the social security, scheme, with particular significance being given to the Dominion’s declining production in primary industry and the very slow development recorded within the secondary industry, we get an idea of the increasing burdens of taxation that will fall on the shoulders of a diminishing number of taxpayers—as the years’ old rapid fall in birth rate bears unwelcome fruit—once the full weight of the cost of social security for all falls upon the already overburdened shoulders of the general body of taxpayers.