OUR BORROWING POLICY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 32, 7 January 1884, Page 2

OUR BORROWING POLICY.

. The other day, says the Press, we heard it shrewdly asked at a meeting of the unemployed, " What good has the 1 last loan done the working men V The speaker was complaining,, we fancy, not so much of tiie amount of the loan, or «he mischievousness of the' loan policy, as of tie borrowing of the three mil - lious being spread over three "years instead of one. "What he meant to say was, " "What is the good of a- million a year to the working- wen ? If you are going to borrow at aft, borrow three , millions or five millions m a lump, and i»pend it m a lump too, and then we may all get a chance of making some-: . thing out of it" But for all that his , question was a startling one. A million a year is a tremendous sum for this little county to add to its already too large indebtedness. It is a tremendous sum for Haifa million of people to spend on public works. Ifc is a tremendous sum of foreign capital to be introduced and circulated 1 among bo few. Yet it does nobody any good. It adds £50,000 a. year to the permanent taxation; and after all the unemployed are clamouring for bread, and talking about using dynamite 1 They say that they are taxed to pay the interest on this borrowed money, and that, therefore, they have a right to a shace of it. The rest of the puqlic say the same thing m other words. They say it is high time for an end to be put to a policy which does nobody any good ; but which fills our streets with agitators and malcontents, and plunges the whole community up to the neck m debt,