NATIONAL DEBT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 July 1940, Page 9

NATIONAL DEBT

BORROWING FROM OURSELVES. The British National Debt, already astronomical, will be even bigger at the end of this war. But it is now. and will go on being, an internal debt, which makes all the difference. A foreign debt is a liability, just like any private loan, to the debtor, writes Professor Lindley M. Fraser, of Aberdeen University, in the Daily Mail. But if we borrow from ourselves and pay back to ourselves we are really, however formidable the figures may look, only pooling and then redistributing the national wealth. Think of a family with a father and sons, all of them earning wages and paying their share of the household expenses. If the woman of the nouse, who does the housekeeping, has to face some special expense —say. the roof has started to leak, and must be repaired—then it makes all the difference whether she gets the money from her husband and sons or whether she goes along the road to a moneylender. If the family itself pays, then they all have to tighten their belts for the time being, but afterwards they have a sound roof over their heads and are no worse off. If she goes to a moneylender she will probably manage to ruin hearself and her whole family. That is the great advantage of internal borrowing.