Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 16 August 1921, Page 2

Tuk circular letter read at the Hokitika Borough Council meeting last week m regard ti Hospital subsidies on local body contributions is a matter of great interest to the ratepayers generally of this district The aim of the present movement is to uplift the Government subsidy payable on the sums which the local bodies have to contribute out of rates to the up-keep of the district hosI itals. At present the subsidy is less than £ for £. It. is just- under 20s. It is manifest if this contribution can be increased, the levy on the local bodies will be diminished proportionately. The Health Department, which went into the matter independently, thought 30s od for every C contributed by the local body, a fair amount. That suggested allocation was cut down by a conference of hospital hoards to 28s. The proposed new subsidy was further reduced to 26 by a Royal Commission. What Parliament, will now do, when dealing with the report of the Royal Commission, is the final test. In flip aggregate the Government will not contribute any greater sum to the hospitals than it now does, but tho amount paid out will he more equitably allocated. That is. the larger the relative contribution on rating basis which may he payable in a district, the higher will he the subsidy allocated. This will tend to even up the Government mbsidy so that there will he removed the existing inequity whereby fortunately placed districts will not be better off as regards Government aid than the poorer districts. The subsidy will he on a sliding scale to bring aill parts into more equitable conditions, and this is a fair proposal which should merit proper adjustment at the hands of Partin merit.

'Ox th<* subject of the depletion of capital by war, a linaneial writer in America points out tiiat it does not s‘and to reason that (lie nnprodilotive expenditures wliieli (.be United States made on the war could be a basis of a. higher permanent level of prosperity than it had ever known before. Real prosperity comes by an increase of the supply of weal til whirl) one way or another contributes to (lie well-lieiug of the population, and the expenditures upon the war do not come under this description. And yet a. great many people who considered that they were very prosperous during the war and in the two years following, are convinced tint that state of prosperity might 1 n o continued indefinitely if the bankers had not arbitrarily restricted tlhe manufacture of credit. They do not see that a settlement day need never have come, or that a reaction was inevitable. Taking the country as a whole, continues the critic, the wartime financial prosperity was a, delusion. Thoa who actually improved their posh lion did so at the expense of others, V,>~«.vd renttlon« were Holeldlv dis, tiirlwtl. "Vth the result that Softie wfri'e

gainers while others were losers, and many were temporarily deceived into I: thinking themselves gainers when in v fact they were not. A good many s peopio were consuming principal when they thought they .were living on in- ( conie, and many were happy and wastej',,l under conditions which could not . possibly be lasting. The people who g;iued unearned profits by the sudden rise of prices should have known that i such a disturbance of normal conditions involved the probability, of a reverse : movement, and all those whose incomes increased faster than their accustomed expenditures should have known that this was temporary gratuity at the expense of the letter-carriers, schoolteachers and millions of other people, whose expenditures increased "inore than their incomes. The economic law, says the writer in conolusion, eventually levels out all such inequalities and restores the normal balance. The people who at first had the best of the distnrbftiK'e are the chief complainants now.