Abstract
THE recent Political and Economic Planning (P E P) broadsheet “Fair Shares for All” (No. 192) is a fitting counterpart to that issued earlier in the year under the title “Financial Mysticism” (No. 188). The latter made a useful contribution to lucid thinking about five simple questions: the financing of the War ; the risk of national bankruptcy ; the value of 'warship weeks' ; export policy ; and the repayment of the National Debt. In regard to the first of these questions, the point is driven home that the real cost of the War is the sweat and sacrifice it imposes, part of which is borne by the present and part by the future. In regard to bankruptcy, the false analogy between State and individual spending is exposed, while the true object of 'warship weeks' of helping us to get warships without inflation is clearly indicated. Similarly, the importance of subordinating trade policies, when peace returns, to the over-riding aim of winning the peace, is demonstrated as well as the necessity of regarding the national resources as a sum of man-hours instead of a sum of pounds sterling, and of the imperative need for avoiding waste of men and material either by unemployment or the misdirection of resources.
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Finance and Social Service in Great Britain. Nature 150, 629 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150629a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150629a0