FREE SPENDING.

Hokitika Guardian, 16 January 1920, Page 3

FREE SPENDING.

CHAOTIC ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. SYDNEY-, January 6I his country of anomalies and paradoxes never presented a more remarkable. picture than it does to-day. Never was money spent so’freely, never was there so much money to spend, never was there so hitter an outcry against economic pressure. Thousands of serious-minded persons, seeking an explanation and a remedy, are already floundering in statistics, contradictions, and scientific jargon, so it is sufficient here to state the facts.

Trade generally is booming—all men in business, whether big or small have never known such a time. Therq, was more money in Melbourne in November during the Cup Carnival, than ever before, and every Sydney trader says that this Christinas his turnover was a

record. One may travel from end to end of this great city and find neither an empty house nor shuttered shop. No' one knows how long the good times will last—there are persistent, nasty rumours about the drought, the cessation of payments to soldiers, the inevitable reaction from a flood of paper money, and terribly inflated credits—so everyone is out to “get- all he can while the getting’s good.” New trading conicrus, large and small, are appearing on all sides.

Meanwhile, the average cost of living, and the' ininiihiiifi-.'wage, are chasing each other along in a mad dance. Ever since the minimum wage in this State was fixed at £3 175., economic conditions have been chaotic. AA’ages everywhere have jumped, oil an average, nearly £1 per week— and prices are not only about one hop behind.

Practically everything has gone up In tlie last month—milk and bootlaces, train fares and newspapers, tobacco and bread, and lemon squashes' and haircutting. A now and arrogant Necessary Commodities Commission is coming rapidly into action, to fix the price of everything, but there is the utmost confusion at the moment be-t-wen wages and the cost oT’living, and also between New South AVales 1 and the adjoining .States, where the minimum wage is much lower. AA'orkers elsewhere are displaying a tendency to swarm to New South AVales, particularly a s'there is plenty of employment a-vail-ninle, hut they will soon find that there is about the same margin between earnings and expenditure hero as elsewhere .—in other words, that the masses simply cannot benefit by any arbitrary interference with the laws of supply and demand. The* Christmas spending period showed the traders and the artisan classes highly “prosperous”—but the middle-class salaried man never felt the burden of living so heavy, as ho feels it just now.'