UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

Hokitika Guardian, 25 July 1931, Page 2

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

BRITISH COMMISSIONER’S REPORT.

If the MacDonald Government has the moral courgae to give full effect to the recommendations set out in the majority interim report ol the Royal Commission on Unemployment Insurance, the process will be something in the nature of a surgical operation. Details of the report, of which a very brief summary was cabled some time ago, show that certain suit fives by both contributors and beneficiaries under the present scheme will be necessary. The Commissioners recommend that in the male age groups 17 to 18, 18 to 21, and over 21, the benefits should he scaled down by 2s to 7s, 12s, and 15s respectively. Youths from 16 to 17 would drop Is. On the women’s side the benefits in the age groups 18 to 21, and over 21, would come down by 2s to 10s and 13s respectively, from 17 to IS by Is 6 1 to 6s, while girls from 16 to 17 would remain as they are at os In the case of adult dependants (wife), the reduction would he Is fd Bs, while child dependants would remain at 2s. In practice the result would he, for example, that a UUiil a lid wife at id three children would he reduced from 32s a week to 29s a week. On the contributory side the employer’s rate would be raised from 8d to Pd. the worker’s from 7d to 9d, and the State’s from 7-Jd to 9d. According to the Commissioner’s estimate, the 1 road result would be that while the State’s contribution would he increased by apnroximately £2,01.10,000, the necessity for borrowing would be reduced by 632.000,000. ‘

If is clear that recommendations of this kind will 1 e extremely imp la table to a Socialist Government dependent for its support upon such a substantial section of the electorate as that represented by the beneficiaries under tlie present scheme. There are over 2) million unemployed in Britain, most of whom are on the electoral roll, and they and their friends and sympathisers combine to make a political factor very disturbing to the present Government, lho general opinion is that instead of adopting that part of the Commission’s report dealing with the scales of contribution and benefits, tlie Government will attempt to save its face by concentrating upon the removal of the innumerable abuses ol the scheme discovered in the course of the Commissioner’s investigations. But this course will leave untouched the financial side of the problem, which is most serious. ■lmmense sums already have been borrowed to enable the Government to carry on the scheme on its present basis of relief. The further piling up of debt will involve the prospect of higher txntion, which inevitably will act upon industry, creating yet more unemployment, According to Sir Alfred AYatson, the Government Actuary, who is quoted in the Commission’s report, “State borrowing on the present] vast scale, without adequate provision for repayment to the Fund,, would quickly call in question the stability of the British financial system.” The income tax of each fiscal year is level upon the earnings of the previous year. As one writer points out, the fiscal results of the depressed conditions which prevailed during the twelve months ended on March 31 last will not, therefore, show themselves until the British Budget is introduced in 1932. “AVitli the Bduget of 1932, or possibly that of 1933,” lie declares, “the crisis will be upon us. The income tax will yield a diminished return.”

Hence the MacDonald Government is faced with a duty to the country, against which its supporters have set its duty to them. Mr Snowden may not include himself among the latter. He declared in a speech at the Mansion House in October last that the country “must face up to this problem and put the insurance fund upon an insurance basis.” Fine words, but is Mr Snowden strong enough in Cabinet to make his colleagues face up to them? “There are those,” remarked the “Observer,” of London, in a review of the Commission’s findings and recommendations, “who demand that the report shall be repudiated out of hand. If their voices prevail, if even on this fundamental matter Ministers will accept no verdict except that of a packed jury, the fate of England will be sealed Certain disaster awaits a country which, while legislating against corrupt practices at elections, uses public funds by the million as bribes to get the votes of the unemployed.” All of which emphasises the truth of the saying attributed to President Hoover that what the community owes the individual citizen is not a “a living.” hut an opportuniv to earn a living. That is the most serious problem of present-day statesmanship. Taxing the community for unemployment relief may he a temporary necessity, hut it is only a makeshift. The danger i.s that government may find it easier to carry on with this makeshift than exert its lf to solve the major problem.