The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1913. THE COST OF LIVING.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 8, 4 January 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1913. THE COST OF LIVING.

The much-discussed question of the cost of living is the subject of a pamphlet recently issued by the Australian Commonwealth Statistician, Mr. G. H. Knibbs. He is, however, careful to explain that his report is not directly concerned with the causes of price movements, nor with any of the numerous proposals to obviate such movements, but at the same time he directs attention to many of the causes and remedies brought forward in reports supplied by statisticians in many other parts .of the world, and from this much information is to be gleaned. Some ascribe the increased cost of living to an increased production of gold, others to legislation affecting tariffs, others again to the growing extravagance and taste for luxury. The world’s great armaments and the general extravagance of Governments in their expenditure of public moneys are again reasons advanced, and' also the operations of trusts and combines, over-capitalisa-tion, and, trades unionism, the concentration of people in the cities and the consequent withdrawal from the food - producing districts, higher wages, higher land values, and a host of other causes. Though each may be in itself sufficient to have an effect on the cost of living, it is probable that the combination of the whole! of the assigned causes is what is making the burden so heavy. .Remedies almost as humorous as the suggested causes of the increased cost of living are, of course, given, but generally speaking, though they appear all right in theory, the practical working out would be quite another matter, However, the whole pamphlet : s full of interest, and Mr. Knibbs tells us one thing which will surprise many people: It is that so far as the comparison of the cost of every-day commodities in the way of general living expenses go, New Zealand is third in the order of cheapness, the countries enumerated standing in the following order:—Great Britain, Belgium, New Zealand, Denmark, Italy, Australia, Canada, Germany, United States of America, Holland, and France. There are doubtless many things to balance the above, but the comparison is certainly complimentary to our little country so far as it goes.