Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, MAY 10, 1938. PENSIONS AND PAYMENTS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 May 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, MAY 10, 1938. PENSIONS AND PAYMENTS.

WHAT the Parliamentary Committee on the national health and superannuation scheme has to say about the enormous mass of evidence submitted to it will be known a few weeks hence. Not many people will be in a position to go into that evidence in detail, but the average citizen may be quite content to base an individual judgment on some leading and now familiar features of the proposals that have been laid before the country, and may be.quite justified in doing so. '

In the first place it has been made manifest that what the Government calls superannuation is not superannuation if by that term is meant assured provision for old age, the right to which is earned and established by contribution. What is proposed is a system of universal contribution and limited benefit—a system of old age pensions awarded or withheld under a means test. As the proposals have taken shape, no attempt is contemplated to establish universal superannuation in New Zealand.

It is proposed to grant somewhat more liberal pensions than have been granted hitherto to old people without means, or with very small means. The full proposed pension of 30s a week is to.be paid to individuals who have an income, at sixty years of age, of not more than £1 a week and a man and wife of that age are each to receive the pension if their joint income does not exceed £1 a week.

There, are few New Zealanders -who will dissent from the view that’old age pensions ought to be asi liberal as the finances of the country will reasonably permit, or deny that the wealthy, or those who are even moderately well off may fairly be taxed to provide these pensions. Some advocates and supporters of the Government proposals have made and are making too much, however, of the contrast between the wealthy and those in need of pensions. To a great extent the existence in the Dominion of a numerous body of people. who belong to neither of these extreme categories has been ignored.

The dividing line that matters most is not, between the wealthy and those who will be able to qualify for pensions, but between those who will qualify and those who will just fail to do so. A married couple saving enough to give them an income of £4 a week in old age will get nothing in return even for lifelong contributions, while those who save nothing are to be guaranteed, at the age of sixty, pensions of £3 a week in the ease of a married couple and of 30s a week in that of an individual.

On what ground can treatment in these conditions of people by no means wealthy be called just and equitable? Is it not obvious, too, that tire adoption of the proposals as they stand must tend heavily to discourage self-reliant effort and enterprise on the part of a considerable proportion of the population—people who can never hope to be‘wealthy, but who have, or might have had, some reasonable prospect of making themselves independent in old age ,of anything in the nature of State bounty? It seems clear, also, that the discouragement of individual thrift must be intensified in the extent to which the proportion of pensioners relatively to the rest of the population, and the financial burdens thereby imposed on the community, are increased.

Irrespective of what supporters or critics of the Government proposals may say, it is quite open to individual citizens to arrive for themselves at an independent judgment upon the leading features of the so-called superannuation scheme which have been instanced —facts which must be taken as established unless the Government’s current proposals are modified.

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE.

yyiTII so many issues of one kind and another set bet ore them in-the local and district elections which are to take place tomorrow, electors should find every incentive to muster in strong force at the polling booths. Long experience lias shown, however, that at almost any time a surprising proportion of people indifferently or heedlessly neglect to exercise their electoral privileges. It ought to be recognised by all electors that in any circumstances it is important that they should cast their votes. In the extent to which its members are slack and indifferent, a democracy is insecure, irrespective of what the prevailing course of events may be. Besides being a privilege, voting is a duty which all good citizens ought to feel bound to perform, in their own interests and those of the community at large. No difficulty or disability that can be overcome should be allowed to stand in the way of carrying out that duty.