WAR BURDENS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 148, 17 April 1940, Page 7

WAR BURDENS

INCOME-TAX PAYERS HIT VERY HEAVILY ''The burden put by the Budget upon those who pay income-tax and surtax may be realised when I remind you that the graduated scale rises to a figure of 17s in the pound. No one can plausibly saj r that the income tax paying classes are not already bearing a tremendously heavy contribution towards war expenditure. The income tax classes have perforce cut down their outlay and arc submitting for the time being to a lowering of their standard of life. But the greater part of the spending that goes on in this country is not spending by the well-to-do. Two-thirds of the consumption by the people of this country is by those with incomes not exceeding £5 a week. We must remember that the principal element in the cost of things we buy usually is the pay of the people who make and distribute them. If, at a time when things are in short supply, the wages of these people are increased to correspond with the first increase of cost, that increase at once increases the cost further, and that increase of cost in turn gives a claim to a further wage rise, and so on. That is the most dangerous type of spiral which faces us to-day."—Sir John Simon, Chancellor of the British Exchequer.