The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 1930. A POLITICAL BUCCANEER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 949, 16 April 1930, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 1930. A POLITICAL BUCCANEER

THERE is no enthusiasm in Great Britain over Mr. Philip Snowden’s second Budget, and such criticism as has been echoed across the world mainly blames the Labour' Chancellor of the Exchequer for a lack of the merit that made Capain ICidd a great pirate—“a bold imagination.” One wonders what the political buccaneer would have done if lie had raided the national treasure-ship with all the cutlasses of Socialism bared, and with the whole of its lively imagination in full play. In any case the British taxpayer should be grateful that the hero of The Hague curbed his imagination and did not inflict upon the country the consequences that New Zealand has experienced from possessing a too imaginative Treasurer. It may be true that the latest British Budget is at once “provocative, commonplace, mechanically efficient, uninspired, drastic, but unimaginative,” but not even a big mouthful of adjectives can hide the fact that Mr. Snowden needed more money and resolutely did not hesitate to serve the needs of the State. A year ago Mr. Winston Churchill, in a similar plight, drained to the dregs what he himself called “the windfalls and once-for-all receipts,” and budgeted for a turnover of £834,830,000. His taxation devices and raids upon sinking funds and other secured sources of revenue were so ruthless, if ingenious, that he earned the sobriquet of “the public executioner.” Even Mr. Snowden was impelled by political indignation to thank God that, financially> Mr. Churchill’s career of profligacy was coming to an end. Again the party wheel has turned its full circle, and now the savage critic of the Tory Treasurer is astride its top. And he lias discovered that Mr. Churchill’s raids on incomes and almosteverything which could yield money to the State fell short of its requirements by over £14,000,000. The sight of that tremendous deficit apparently froze Mr. Snowden’s imagination. He was called upon and compelled to meet it and ultimately to overcome it in a manner and by methods which would hurt least the friends and supporters of the Labour Party. This lie has accomplished with provocative and mechanical efficiency. One hundred and ninety thousand taxpayers with incomes ranging from over £2,000 to more than £400,000 a year are to be taxed with something like the record severity they experienced for four years after the war and survived. They will have to pay £70,000,000 this year in super-tax alone. Then millionaires and men with great possessions, who enjoy an enviable longevity, will be more afraid than ever to die, for should death overtake them before a Conservative Government returns to power and the exercise of a merciful policy half the value of their estates will be taken in payment of duty on their last luxury. Mr. Snowden, with generous imagination, lias given them a splendid incentive to live on and suffer in reasonable comfort. As far as ordinary income-tax is concerned, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has remembered the value of a pleasant mood at the ballot-box. The standard rate of income-tax is to be increased by sixpence to the 1923-25 level of four shillings and sixpence in the £. This imposition will not seriously affect the small man who still will have to pay only 2s on the first iy2so of his taxable income. Thus three-fourths of the total number of income-tax payers will not be affected at all. The duty on their beer is to be increased by a penny a g-allon, but it is expected that a distribution of this moderate increase over each glassful in a gallon will be beyond the brewers’ computation. In other ■words, it is not anticipated that the frothy imposition will be passed on to the consumer.

The worst feature of the Labour Budget, however, is its provision for the withdrawal of several vital safeguarding duties. These were helping depressed industries to meet fierce competition from European countries, and the loss of jirotection will be a serious blow to many branches of British industry. The McKenna duties on imported motor-ears, clocks,, watches, musical instruments and cinema films are to remain for another year at least, but even these have been threatened with abolition. Labour is pledged to remove all the existing fiscal duties. In time, Mr. •Snowden’s imagination may leap to a ruthless practice of that policy. No one can say that the Budget is a good one, but it easily might have been worse. Luxury still is rife and rampant in Great Britain, as also in this complacent country, and it may yet be necessary for a Labour Government or some other administration with or without imagination, to compel foolish peoples, like Australians, to live more simply and work much harder for a relatively high standard of living. The trend of the times makes polities an open sea for legalised buccaneering. HOSPITAL FINANCE SOME idea of how the cost of hospital administration and maintenance is rising is furnished by a statement of receipts and expenditure placed before the Auckland Hospital Board yester- ’ day. On the year’s working for the twelve months'ended March 31. expenditure exceeded receipts by the substantial sum of £30,673. One of the factors contributing to this was the increased amount demanded for the purposes of outdoor relief, but the heaviest increase in any one case is to be noted under the heading of hospital maintenance, the cost of which for the Auckland Hospital alone rose by over £20,000. If the board is paying now for its policy of centralisation of units, an aggravation of the position, rather than any immediate improvement, must be looked for, as the erection of the infectious diseases block on tlie present site will exaggerate the evils of the policy. To some extent tlie board is tlie victim of economic 1 circumstances. It must expect an increasing strain upon the resources available for relief purposes, and may also confront an increasing difficulty in the collection of fees. There is a great deal of truth in the suspicion, voiced In- Dr. E. B. Gunson yesterday, that in prosecuting a vigorous system of collection, the board may be imposing a hardship on those in difficult circumstances. This opens up the whole question of uniformity in public hospital fees. Dr. Gunson pointed out that many poor people who had been compelled to accept hospital treatment were made to pay to the limit of their capacity, while people who were sometimes considerably better off escaped with the same fees. The remedy would be to impose something like a graduated scale of fees according to the means of the patient. But since, without the introduction of private wards, which to many represents an obnoxious principle, the service for which the fees were paid to remain the same, it is doubtful if this is a fair remedy. It must be admitted That tlie spectacle of tlie rich man who takes advantage of public hospital facilities and pays no more for them than his neighbour who may be in poor financial circumstances, is very unpleasant; but to say as an arbitrary rule that the rich man should pay more would be a dangerous expedient. Until some safer method of differentiation can be introduced, it would seem wiser for board members to insist that the board officials, in their zeal to collect all the fees possible, shall not go to harsh lengths in dealing with those who are in genuine difficulties.