SOCIAL CREDIT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21822, 27 November 1940, Page 6

SOCIAL CREDIT

AUSTRALIAN LECTURER A visitor to Timaru yesterday was Mr John Hogan, a young Australian orator, who is undertaking a lecturing tour of the Dominion as the guest of the New Zealand Social Credit movement. Mr Hogan delivered three addresses in the course of the day. He first spoke at the weekly luncheon of the Rotary Club; m the afternoon he addressed members of the South Canterbury Chamber of Commerce and last night, in the Little Playhouse, he addressed a public meeting on “Constructive Finance, Victory For Peace.” The evening meeting was presided over by Mr G. H. Andrews. At all meetings the visitor, who is a fluent speaker, was accorded a splendid hearing. The object of Mr Hogan s tour is to endeavour to make the people of the Dominion think in regard to the financial system of the country. He said that his objective was the achievement and maintaining of the Dominion’s man power and resources for the successful prosecution of the war and the continued development of the Dominion. It was important that this high effort should be continued for post-war reconstruction and prosperity without interference from economic breakdown produced by an unnecessary burden of debt charges. Mr Hogan advocated control of credit by the Reserve Bank and a system of subsidy to prevent prices from rising. He argued that the country’s war effort must depend on what the people could produce while the war was in progress, and said that production would be hampered if the threat of debt was held over them, because an outworn system called for payment in money long after the real payment in effort had been made. New Zealand needed a policy that would permit the credit available to be used without being crippled bv high prices and taxation, the lecturer said. Prices could be kept down by reversing the sales tax principle. If retail prices could be taxed 5 per cent, they could just as easily be subsidised. If part of the credit expansion had been used to subsidise retail prices and keep them down, there would have been no need for award rates to be increased and the primary producers would not have clamoured for increased returns. There had been a decrease in the purchasing power of money, because there had been no scientific control of prices. The people should demand control of and an intelligent use of the credit of the country.