TAXED OUT OF JOBS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 150, 17 February 1932, Page 6

TAXED OUT OF JOBS

, PROPOSAL TO GIYE DOLE TO UNEMPLOYED YOUTHS AND GIRLS. GENERAL CRITICISM. SYDNEY, Saturday. City economists declare that the granting of the full dole to the State's 52,835 unemployed youths and girls. would constitute the first step towards general poverty. •It was pointed out to-day that, as the Government had already defaulted in its own debt payments and could not carry any additional financial burden, the A.L.P. and Labour Council, who are to press for this measure when Mr. Lang returns from. Melbourne, were dangerously tmfindful of taxation limits. which directly af~ fect employment. Latest figures prepared by the voeational branch of the Education Department show that up to the end of last school year, and includmg the unabsorbed children, there were 30,52.5 boys and' 22,310 girls out of employment. "We want jobs, not the dole, for them," said the secretary (Mr. Connolly) to-day. "Taxed Out of a Job," Points made by a leading city economist on the subject to-day were: — (1) Crushing taxation has already so crippled industry that thousands of young people have been depiived of the right to work. Further taxation would lead to their almost eomplete starvation. (2) Dole relief has reached a point at which a material increase in cost would find an aceelarating number of unemployed, and the well of financial resources dried up. (3) Unless the greatest eare is taken in the issue of further relief, there will be a tendency to kill youthful ambition, and to inerease laziness and the parasitic class generally. (4) There are no cases of poverty, and no suggestion that any child is, or will be, deprived of the necessities of life. To give effect to the .proposal of full "A" scale rations (about 5s 9d) to each of the 52,835 boys and girls out of work would mean a special staff, and probably a special department, for the purpose of "double checking" the bona fide cases, quite apart from the staggering addition to dole expenditure.