FAMINE PRICE FOR BUTTER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2153, 22 July 1920, Page 1

FAMINE PRICE FOR BUTTER.

(From the Lyttelton Times.)

We have never been able to regal’d the butter subsidy as anything better than an expensive cloak for the fact that the dairy-farmers of New Zealand are ,being paid in New Zealand the equivalent of the high price ruling for butter in the wardisturbed countries of the Old World, and the Prime Minister’s announcement that he —proposes to continue paying the subsidy, to “enable New Zealand consumers of butter to secure supplies at a reason-' able price without doing injustice to the producers,” leaves us cold and unimpressed. In the first place,’the subsidy does not help the New Zealand consumer in the slightest, since what is taken oft the price of butter is put on to the general cost of living in the shape of taxation. Taxation, as Mr Massey himself has informed (he world, is borne by the wage-earners in the last analysis, so thaLobviously the only persons who can be helped by the butter subsidy are those who receive it, and those fortunate persons who are able to regard their taxation as an expense of trade, and to make a profit on it. If under the subsidy system the average New Zealand consumer gets butter at a “reasonable price” that can only be supported on the contention that it is reasonable to ask New Zealanders to pay the highest price on, the export market, less the cost of shipment. Under normal conditions of an approximate equilibrium between the world’s Supply and the world’s demand that principle might be admitted without any injustice to local consumers. But the conditions are not normal. ‘ Butter production in various parts of the world has been reduced by the war and its aftereffects, and the price ruling in countries abroad, Britain included, is based on a demand considerably in excess of (he supply. We have no objection whatever to New Zealand producers faking,any legitimate adIvantage they can out of the favourable trend of prices on the other side of the world, but we can see two or three good reasons why they should not be allowed to bring famine prices into New Zealand because there is a famine in Europe.