ECONOMICS
By Tom Mercer
1958The NewsletterTom Mercer Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
TUESDAY’S BUDGET WILL HIT YOUR WAGES : By Our Economic Correspondent, Tom Mercer THE eighth Tory budget since the war—ignoring that of October 1955—will have one thing in common with the preceding seven: it will be a class budget.
Butler, Macmillan, Thorneycroft and Heathcoat Amory may differ on how best to preserve the interests of their class, but they are completely united on the need to preserve these interests.
If one merely looked at the economic state of the world— ~ . depression in the USA, falling purchasing power in the primary producing countries, unemployment growing in country after country—one might think that Heathcoat Amory would bring in a Budget to stimulate the economy.
Such a budget would increase the people’s purchasing power and take all the necessary steps to counteract the deflationary symptoms generated by the dear money policy coinciding with overproduction. of both primary commodities and manufactured -goods..- .
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But Heathcoat Amory is not concerned with stopping the slide into crisis, any more than Eisenhower is. His prime concern, like that of the Cohen Council; is to reduce the level of real wages.
He intends to reduce costs, i.c.. wage costs, so that British capitalism can compete more favourably in a shrinking world And he will frame his budget for one -purpose: to help the Tory offensive against wages.
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