WEALTH AND WELFARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 June 1941, Page 3

WEALTH AND WELFARE

POST-WAR ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. A suggestion that in the word “welfare” Britain might find the right and possibly the only solution of post-war economic problems, was made by Mr F. L. McDougall, economic adviser to the Australian Government, in an address to the Royal Society of Arts. “The Empire primary producer,” he said, “is directly concerned with food and the raw materials of clothing. Let us suppose that as part of the peace settlement the nations pledged themselves to adopt policies designed to bring public health to the standards reached in 1939 by New Zealand, Australia and Holland, and for this purpose to regard adequate food, housing, and clothing as the foremost desiderata of their economic policies. If this was done, even by the nations of Western civilisation alone, the effects upon world trade in primary products would be great indeed. If, in the peace settlement, we can give real meaning to this practicable aspiration, the nations,’ freed from enormous expenditures on armaments, will be able to devote a larger proportion of their economic resources to social welfare. I shall have the temerity to suggest that the industrial nations—i.e., Great Britain, Western Europe, the industrial States of the United States, and Japan—will] find that they cannot afford not to find the means of placing a rising standard of living in the forefront of economic policy. My main reason for this is not because it will be demanded by the industrial workers of these countries, although that will probably happen. My reason is that, in the post-war world, the only way in which the older industrial countries will be able to find adequate markets for their enterprise and skill will be if there is a world-wide movement to improve housing, clothing, transport and the enjoyment of leisure.”