"SORRY READING"

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 6, 30 September 1937, Page 6

"S0RRY READING"

-Press Association.)

Depression Lessons Not Taken to Heart EMPLOYER'S COMMENT

(By Telegraph-

Wellington, This Day. "The Budget makes sorry reading for the New Zealand taxpayer, and suggests that the policy of the Government may be summed up in the expression, 'Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die,' " said Mr. A, G. Mitchell, president of the New Zealand Employers' Federation. "Tho fact appears to have been entirely overlooked tliat the present buoyant position of the country V finances is due to the improved prices received for wool and our other exported comoiodities, and it has apparently been assuraed that such prices are likely to continue. The lessons of the depression years have not been taken to heart. "The imposition on industry of the 40-hour week, with the accoinpanying adjustment of wage rates, has resulted in increased costs and higher retail prices with the iuevitable huge increase in tho volume and value of iinported eonimoditics, which normally should be produced in* our own factories. "In many lnstances to-day 50 per cent. of the net inconio goes in payment of land and income-tax alono, an amount in exCess of that uvailable for a return to the shareholders who iind the whole of Ihe money employed in fche undertaking, and it seems certain that increased taxation is inevitable in the near future as u result of tho proposals provided for in the Budget. "It should not be overlooked thatour already high and rapidly increasing costs have an important bearing on our ability to supply those comniodilies for export on which wo rely for iho bulk of our national income — at a ,»rice which our overscas market can alford to pay — and any substantial drop in export prices or any international eo-mplicutions which inight Intert'ere with the safe transport of our produce to its market would promptly bring us face to faco with tho day of reckoning, which is inevitable as a result of the huge increase in our national debt, involved by 'the programme of tho Government as sot, out in the present Budget."