The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1916. THE WAR BONUS PROPOSAL.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 June 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1916. THE WAR BONUS PROPOSAL.

The high cost of living, especially in some parts of the Dominion, is pressing very hardly on the slender resources of people with incomes of £2 10s to £3 10s a week, whose struggles for a reasonably comfortable existence under normal circumstances are generally considerable. So far the Government Ims signally failed to take any practical steps towards applying a remedy. If there were insuperable difficulties in the way, then there would be a reasonable excuse for this inaction, but there are no difficulties, courage, combined with combeing all that is needed. Yet, while the" Government is so callous over the urgent needs of the strugglers, they are generously disposed towards the army of well-paid, not overworked and highly privileged Civil Servants, and for the relief of such numbers of this class who are not receiving more than £3lo a year it is proposed to tax the country for the purpose of providing them with a war bonus to tide over the hard times. Only to think of it! Men in receipt of £6 a week being so desperately in need of salvation from the pinch of poverty that the country is to bo called upon to provide them with doles under the name of war bonuses! The proposal has raised a general cry of disapproval. Under the heading, "Bobbing Peter to Pay Paul," the Christchuvch Press jays that to tax the rest of the community in order to provide "war bonuses" to all State employees whose salaries dc not exceed £315 per annum is grossly unfair to the struggling professional men, tradesmen and persons with fixed incomes exceeding the limit of exemption hut still not large enough to raise the recipients above the struggling classes, They are feeling the increase in the cost of living as much as anybody. Why should a New Zealand civil servant earning £3OO a year and with an assured position until be retires on a pension, not only escape all war taxation, but actually receive a "war bonus" to be wrung out of less fortunate members of the community wlio might be earning larger but still moderate incomes for the time being, but whose living depends upon the maintenance of their health, and who 'have to make their own provision for their families and their own old age? There is only one explanation of this injustice, adds our contemporary, and that is that the Government are afraid for the votes of the State employees and the unions of organised workers. The Otago Daily Times says: "There should be no absolute need for the payment of a war bonus to any person who is in receipt of £G a week, whether public servant or not, to enable him to maintain a family in decent comfort, and there ia no good and sufficient reason why the minimum upon which income tax is charged should not be reduced in order that, in accordance witli the Imperial precedent, the scope of direct taxation •kniM be extended to meet the exigen-

cies of war finance." The Dunedin Star contends that taxing the general public, who receive no bonus, to provide the means of giving a bonus to the employees of the State is the queerest kind of statecraft. To increase the cost of living to one portion of the community in order to ease the cost to another portion is a new enlightened application surely of the principle of robbing Peter to pay Paul. This question may very pertinently be put: In what way have the postal servants deserved better of the State than the tailors and the tinkers? Surely this, is no time for using money drawn from the general revenue for the purpose of benefiting one special class of laborers. The Government have embarked the country upon a scramble for bonuses, the end of which will be that no class will get any good, but all will get a good deal of bother. The Christchurch Star says: "The £3OO a year man should be able to get on very well without any war-time bonus; it is the £l5O a year worker with a family who demands consideration, the man, whether inside or outside the State employment circle, the shop assistant, clerk, the laborer, the artisan, or who ever he may be, who struggles along on £2 10s to £3 per week,'and whose employment it may be is intermittent, interfered with by trade slackness, by weather, or by sickness. These are the people who should lw relieved, preferably by some courageous and drastic regulation of the cost of living, and the easy inequitable method of clapping an extra £400,000 on to the general taxpayer for the benefit o: a comparatively small section of the community leaves the problem untouched." These are only a few of the condemnations of the proposal, the initiation of which is a standing reproacli to the Government for its in failing to tackle the cost of living problem without imposing any burden on the country,