GIPE-PUNE-OIIOI2 - DSpace@GIPE

282 WORLD~CRISIS: INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS
.the people are being paid not as wage~earners but as
·CltlZens. The public finances in a really poor country
cannot understand the expenditure on "social purposes"
.and the mysteries of unemployment insurance and "crisis
.aid" nor cope with famine relief problems in a satis·
.factory manner. Neither the German nor the British
budgets, even under conditions of retrenchment and
,economy, are the budgets of famished and hunger-sticken
peoples. It is, besides, very noteworthy that in spite of
:unemployment the organized labour forces in Germany'
.and Great Britain are not prepared to agree to a lowering
.of the wage rates. The idea evidently is that the country
is in a position to pay high rates and keep the wage.
·earners on efficiency level. In other words, the people
.expect that the Government as well as the employers combined
can maintain the entire people and this in a suffi·
.ciently decent manner, no matter whether with statutory
doles or econoinic wages. Some dislocation and malad.
justment is certainly in evidence but neither the public
finance nor the· national wealth of the unemployment
Tegions is in a seriously bad plight.
According to the first report of the British Royal
'Commission on Unemployment Insurance, the present
financial scheme, so far as the state' is concerned, is as
foll~ws :
t • Contribution to insurance benefit: £ t 4,800,000
.2. Cost of "transitional" benefit (i.e.
benefit paid to unemployed who
had no~ paid thirty contributions
in the. two years preceding their
unemployment, and who there-