Abstract
THE need for a comprehensive and coherent policy covering the whole of the economic field has repeatedly been pressed upon the Government, with little apparent effect. One cause of the misgivings often expressed lies in the upward trend of prices, encouraged by the disparity between the purchasing power poured into the market by Government expenditure and the fall in supplies inseparable from war conditions, resulting in some commodities being beyond the reach of families not engaged in any munitions industry, apart from the many whose incomes have fallen off or who have become unemployed. The Purchase Tax itself has given a further impetus to raising the cost of living, and the increase in railway charges has given a sharp reminder of dangers attending the absence of any consistent policy for the control of wages, costs, and prices. Moreover, there has been no indication of the methods by which the Government proposes to prevent the dislocation and anomalies which are bound to attend the increasing deflection of non-essential industries to war purposes if businesses and individuals affected are left to adjust themselves to the new conditions without guidance and assistance. We have no evidence of any plan for collective action by industries to enable them to switch into direct war work the maximum of man-power and equipment with the minimum of friction and economic waste, or of any wide extension of rationing and price-fixing to ensure fair distribution of the reduced quantities of goods available.
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Economic Policy and Man-Power. Nature 147, 185–187 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147185a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147185a0