Inflation Menace Must be Tackled

Manawatu Times, Volume 67, Issue 111, 4 September 1942, Page 5

Inflation Menace Must be Tackled

SYDNEY BUDGET VIEWS SYDNEY, Sept. 3. The Commonwealth Government’s Budget for the fourth year of the war reveals a lamentable and dangerous reluctance to meet squarely the difficult du,y of paying for the war,” says the SSyuney Morning Herald in an editorial. The Treasurer has failed to put forward any concrete proposals for bridging the gap between revenue and expenditure, which is now greater than ever.” The Herald adds: “The Budget should aim at recovering from the public by higher levies a substantial part of the flood of new spending-power which la being created each week, so as to hold in check the growth of private spendtngs. This Labour’s financial proposals fail utterly to do. “Fourteen-million pounds of new taxes is a puny and ineffective weapon to curb the inflationary effects of a rapidlygrowing excess of purchasing power. A more equitably gi'aduated levy on income, combined with a system of post-war credits, would provide the safeguard which is needed against inflation by pruning the spending-power of the public at ita source. The fact is, it is in the lower incomes that the great bulk of spending power lies, and, in spite of ita bold words, the Commonwealth Government hesitates before an unpopular step. No budget which shirks it can be considered satisfactory.” The Daily Telegram, in a leader on the Budget, says that compulsory loans would be the surest and swiftest means of curtailing the orgy of civilian spending. “There is an unfamiliar itch to spend in thousands of war-fattened pockets,” the Telegraph adds. “The Government must tap those pockets.”