THE CONSUMER’S POSITION.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 370, 13 September 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

THE CONSUMER’S POSITION.

“I would be rash to assume that a fall in prices is necessarily inimical to economic progress,” the writer adds. “Consumers are not less important than producers, and if a decline represents a loss to the latter it represents a corresponding gain to the former. During the period 1914 20 producers were the gainers and consumers the sufferers; and if consumers are now benefiting at the expense of producers the change can hardly be regarded as other than a healthy economic adjustment. Price adjustments are an integral feature of the economic mechanism and the present fall is no more exceptional than the preceding rise. It is important to note also that a large part of the fall in wholesale prices has not reached the consumer, but has been short-circuited for the benefit of intermediaries, the cost of living being 54 per cent, higher than in 1913, and, therefore, so far as the ultimate consumer is concerned a substantial part of the fall in prices is quite meaningless. Wheat falls to its pre-war price, but bread is appreciably dearer; the same may happen in wool, but -t has little immediate effect upon tho price of clothes—at least, a much smaller effect than the preceding rise had. The world’s economic crisis, in short, is duo to a number of maladjustments, which are slowly but surely being remedied.”