Future plans should provide for family living wage

WHY NOT SAVE FOR OLD AGE?
From our Political Correspondent THE cry of "We wuz robbed!" with which the Party has greeted the Government's pension contains more truth than they probably realise.
Labour scheme
The Government plan, which represents their major legislative enterprise this side of the next General Election, demonstrates once again the extent to wh ich Conservatives and Socialists fall over one another in their eagerness to build the Servile State.
In many ways, however, it is an excellent scheme-provided it is regarded purely as a temporary measure to cope with abnormal and exceptional difficulties and not as the foundation of the future order of society.
The high rate of unemployment and the low rate of wages in the not so distant past have helped to eradicate from many people's minds the concept of saving up to meet future contingencies. simply because It was impossible.
This disinclination to assume responsibility for ones own needs has been further strengthened by creeping inflation, which successive Governments have grappled with hut failed to destroy, although the present Government has been slightly more successful in minimising its effects than previous administrations.
Consequently. it is only just that the State should today provide adequately. if not generously. for old people. A man who has now reached 65 to 70 would have found it exceedingly difficult. if not impossible. to make adequate provision for his own old age during his soliCrising years. most of which fell in the period between the wars.
But it should be clearly recognised that. according to Christian teaching, this represents an abnormal functioning of society. What is needed today is (a) adequate provision for old people, most of whom, through no fault of their own, were unable to make such provision for themselves; (b) the gradual tapering off of such a pension scheme, coupled with the general introduction of the family living wage. on the understanding that in the future people will be able to afford to make their own provision for old age.
Anything other than this, on the lines of universal compulsory saving enforced by the State (which is what Government pension schemes amount to), is a diminution of the dignity of man as a responsible being.