CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20234, 12 May 1931, Page 11

CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT.

ojr-Mr Shand asks if the world is W jn actual wealth to-day than it a few years ago, or is it more mis--artged* Perhaps somebody abler I wiD'tell him. Meantime, he will Ld tome most interesting figures in * Meat New Zealand Tear Book. The inital value of all the land in New ) "eatend is given (land and improve- *■*'* in 1919 as £445 millions and in 1928 as £631 millions Tie capital of public and private aanpanies is given . ■Tr in 1919 as £26 millions and in 1928 as £4l millions The fi"d assets of all factories (land, buildings, and machinery) is given in 1923 as £45 millions and in 1928 as £64 millions (This includes heat, light, and power factories in 1923 as £l6 millions and in 1928 as £3O millions) The "assets" of local bodies is given in 1919 as £26 millions and in 1928 as £6O millions The indebtedness of local bodies is riven in 1919 as £2S millions and in 1928 as £66 millious The General Government indebtedness is given in 1919 as £l7O millions and in 1928 as £256 millions The above figures make our Wealth ippear to be a great deal more in 1928 tsan it was a few years before, but it if very doubtful to my mind whether tJa is really the case, and when togsft values of our assets come to be iumpnted they may compare very unfavoarably, especially when the debts we tare on them are taken into consideration. The General Government to-day ' jjres £IOO millions more -noney than it did in 1919, and about £6O millions of that is owing to people outside New Zealand, and we have to send away four millions more in interest yearly than we did in 1919. Local bodies owe £4O jjilßons more than they* owed in 1919, tad their total annual receipts have gone np from seven million pounds to twenty-one million pounds. Tie value of our exports this year will probably be nearly £2O millions less than in 1919. (That was a big year, hut talcing 1920, a normal year, we shall be below it by about seven millions). Taking 1920, our exports were £37 per head of our population, and they will •be' very greatly less than that this ■«•*—probably 30 per cent. down. In. "I*lo our factory production "added j nine" was £22.47 per bead of the population, and in 1928 it had not increased bat stood at £22.46. In 1928 each £IOO paid in wages produced £l3 less of "added value *> than it did in 1919, in spite of the huge increase in Dower and machinery. £ ln a few words, I should say our wealth is nominally greater to-day, but its earning power is less than it was eg 1919. and the burden of taxes, rates, Sad costs of all kinds is very much greater. The same thing applies in Britain. Before the war the national debt was £700,000,000, now it is £8,000,000,000, ,$j eleven times as great, and taxation fitMr about £l7 per head of her populated 'Sfifetruth is that during and since wfttr every nation borrowed enor- - Miff awns of money, first to shoot .«§*§ and then to repair the damage, ifoulitinee to sustain both the military wounded and their de;ifjMrtfnitiT Britain and her dominions ~:|ij#'£troggHng hard to pay their interrepay their debts. Germany : lojd idtatria got rid of their internal "Wto "lff inflation and repudiation. t Belgium got rid of four T a in the same way. Bussia ■s by confiscation. America hj, war profits, and ifl'getand million pounds Jrom .O.U.'s signed in her existralia, and New' Zealand heavily taxed nations in ■day, because Britons, are eks, nor defaulters. These ries- are definitely at I regard as the vital g power in relation to exwts; and.because we nave • standard of living than yews ago some are five way a Ettle° we shall rets and promote trade by js, promoting consumption, g idle hands;. and perhaps es would not. suffer ninth We have accepted the printing the* unemployed.) In costly and unsatisfactory, better if it conld be made even thongh we coni it costly.—Yours, etc., WM. MACHIN. 1931.