DEBT BURDEN

Hokitika Guardian, 1 April 1933, Page 7

DEBT BURDEN

NEED FDR WRITING OFF CAPITAL ECONOMIST EXPRESSES VIEW. LONDON. March 17. “You may spend your economic resources either on th ft provision of capital or upon the provision of consumables, but what is spent on the first is at the expense of tb (1 second, i*nd it is idle 'to expect to get it back again t'° consume at a later time. In due course, the capital wears out, depreciates and becomes write s Professor Frederick Roddy in bis new book, “Poverty, Old and New.” “Tf not continuously written oil, it becomes Indistinguishable from dead debt. We are still paying interest on the compensation t 0 landownere and the canal systems the railways had to purchase when they were built, and as railways become mor e and more obsolete by reason of the natural development of the science of transport, so these payments become more and more impossible. The same is true of most of the 'accumulation—slum cities, obsolete plant and decrepit appurtenances —-which we inherit from the great"‘Victorian fcra of accumulation, waited >nto existence by the puff of th G steam engine. A scientific civilisation must, just like" any well-conducted private business, write off and redeem its debts continuously, if it is not to fall into deeay."