INFLATION
[To the Editor of the SPECTA'T0R.1 SIR,—The reasonably equitable and wise distribution of new issues of money or re-issues of old money, to increase consump- tion and supplement creations of credit money by bank loans, presents no insuperable difficulty, and methods have often been suggested. The two most effective would appear to be grants of new money (including credit or " cheque " money) to producers on their sales to enable them to reduce their prices to the consumer and grants of equal sums of new money to all citizens (or all citizens with incomes below a certain amount, for a start), in the form of national dividends. These two methods of issuing new money would be inter- related and in time the latter would probably tend in great measure to eliminate the need for the former. From Board of Trade returns, returns made in connexion with trade censuses,
we have ample information for collecting, at regular intervals of suitable frequency, data which would show what
increases in the national wealth in goods justified and provided backing for new issues of money to render possible the purchase of these goods by all citizens, including citizens the need for whose paid labour had been eliminated by machinery and other causes. Even if a rule were made to deduct 90 per cent. (an absurdly large amount) from all figures appearing to justify new issues of money in deference to the inflation bogey, we should still be 10 per cent. better off than we are at present when there is absolutely no continuous and planned policy to expand purchasing power with the expansion of the supply of needed goods.
No person with experience of the tremendous capacity of the modern administrative machine to handle huge numbers of citizens for financial or other purposes can doubt the possibility of arranging for national dividend and other payments, the former, possibly, through the Post Office ; and no one with any sense of proportion would consider the salaries of the necessary staff (far less gigantic than many people suppose) too high a price to pay for the prosperity that must follow ability to buy what we can produce and import.—I am, Sir, &c.,
TAVISTOCK.
Glentrool Lodge, Newton Stewart, Scotland.
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