OLD-AGE PENSIONS.
IVO Tee EDITOR or Tun "aplapparaR,^]
SiRo--In your footnote to Sir Francis Channing's letter• in the Spectator of June 15th you refer to "old-age pensions, with the necessary annual expenditure of some g30,000,090." I unsure it would interest many of your readers, including myself, if you stated how you arrive at this enormous figure. It seems to me that in your anxiety to deprecate old-age pensions you are considerably overestimating the expenditure. I might mention that my copy of the Spectator goes to Guatemala, Central America, so that I cannot refer to previous numbers. I do not think you went into any statistical detail in your
recent Budget article.—I am, Sir, &C., T. Meson. 48 Chase Side, Enfield.
[The question with regard to the cost of pensions to all persons over sixty-five can be best answered by the following quotation from the speech of the President of the Local Government Board in the House of Commons on May 10th He had collected sufficient data as to how they could begin, and he found that if they were to haves universal old-age pension of five shillings a week at sixty-five years of age, it would in 1907, cost £29,000,000."
At least another million would be expended in the cost of distribution and investigation of bogus claims. In Australia one of the great difficulties experienced is proof of age, and, considering the size and complexity of the Eritisb popula- tion, the difficulties here are likely to be even greater. —En. Spectator.]
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