SATE OR SPEND?

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18808, 2 December 1932, Page 3

SATE OR SPEND?

MR CHAMBERLAIN’S ADVICE. EXERCISE COMMON SENSE. (From a Correspondent.) LONDON. Oot. 27. Mr Neville Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,, laid ths foundation-stone of the new head offices for Birmingham Municipal Bank In Broad Street, which will eventually he an impressive feature o{ the Civic Centre scheme. At a luncheon held later at thd Council House, Mr Chamberlain said that people were asking whether in these days it w r as really wise 08 right to save, or whether oa the contrary, everything that a man could spend he should spend in orden to contribute to the employment o t the people. The other day a number of eminent economists felt It their duty to Instruct the public and to give the views which, as they said, after a life of study, they had formed on this important subject. Two or three days afterwards another body of eminent economists also wrote to The Times and expressed views diametrically opposite. Thus was counsel darkened, and thus did the unhappy layman find no wisdom in a multitude of counsellors. He thought that we had better disregard theory and come back again to our own common sense to decide what was right. He was convinced that public authorities, both national and local, had spent too much in relation to the resources of the only people from whom they could get their money —the people who had money, whether from investments or from employment. With private individuals it was not so easy to lay down a general rule. “ If I may sum up my advice to the private individual,” Mr Chamberlain continued, “I would say: ‘Use your own common sense and apply it to your own Individual circumstances; do not abstain from spending if you can afford to spend under the mistaken idea ttiat you are performing a public service by keeping 'your money lying idle in the hank. On the other hand, do not feel any qualms of conscience or feel you are doing wrong if you put a little bit aside even to-day, for it may be in that way you are helping to preserve the stability of the country."