SAVING AND SPENDING

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3210, 30 July 1932, Page 7

SAVING AND SPENDING

"From official sources come the conflicting cries, 'Save all you can' and 'Spend all your can.' And between the two cries it is difficult for the ordinary citizen to see what his patriotic duty is," writes- Mr A. G. Gardiner in the "Star." "The truth lies, as it usually does lie, in a judicious union of boh extremes. Obviously, in a world perishing from, the paralysis of trade, it would be absurd to preach the doctrine that, in order to effect a cure, nobody should buy. "Economy in public expenditure is one thing. In regard to that we have shifted from the mood of wild extravagance, in which we thought that any scheme was desirable if only it cost a lot of money, to a mood of thrift in which we are prepared to cut down even the elementary public services. But this change has been forced upon us by necessity—the necessity of balancing the Budget and preserving the stability of our credit in a reeling world.

"No such necessity applies to private spending. The more we buy and the more we keep our available money circulating through the veins of trade, the better it is for the butcher, the grocer, the manufacturer and the operative. The only remedy for unemployment is more trade. "If we keep our money tied up in a napkin we deprive industry of its lifeblood, and add to the sum of unemployment. It may be said that money deposited in a bank does not lie idle; but no use to which the bank may put it is comparable to the effect of the direct consumption and spending of the individual citizen."