" NEW "' MONEY FOR INVALIDS [To the Editor of
THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Of all those who suffer unnecessary poverty through the benighted monetary system our statesmen decline to reform, none are more to be pitied than the incurable invalids whose inadequate incomes deny them the medical comforts their condition demands and often a fair supply of the bare necessaries of life into the bargain. If the Government, as an initial experiment in sane finance, were to create and give these sufferers enough money to assure them reasonable comfort nothing but good could possibly result.
The most die-hard advocate of work for all could not pretend that they would be deinoralised into idleness, seeing that they are already incapable of labour.
Their relatives, often themselves poor, would be relieved of the unfair burden of having to support them-and, in the case of those in receipt of Public Assistance, the same would be true of taxpayers as a whole. All the trades from which they were able to buy a greater amount of goods would benefit by their increased custom.
Lastly, no economist with the foggiest grasp of the con- ditions necessary to induce a rise in the general price-level could honestly pretend that the addition of a sum so small in relation to the country's total money-supply could possibly produce inflation. The grants of new money would be can- celled out of existence again almost as soon as issued through being used to repay some fraction of the debt owed by industry to the banking system, and even if we were to imagine a sudden and miraculous cessation of all borrowing by persons engaged in the production and distribution of goods and services, it would still be possible to set aside from revenue any sum it was deemed necessary to destroy to prevent the new issues ultimately piling up and proving
redundant.—Yours very truly, TAVISTOCK. Barrington House, Lindfield, Sussex.
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