The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-12-06
STARVING OURSELVES RICH

MOT few farsighted observers have been
' alarmed at the seeming cordially of the
Roosevelt administration to the outworn no.
lions associated with the dogmas of pain
and scarcity economy There has been no
little concern lest the administration fail to
realize that We actually are living in a pleas
ure and plenty era Of economic development
and that permanent prosperity never can be
attained without a recognition of this basic
fact.
Some reassurances on this point will be OBJ
tanned from a recent article by Mr.. Mordecai
Ezekiel. Can We Starve Ourselves Rich?"
in Today. Mr. Ezekiel is a leading economic
adviser to the administration and his views
must be accorded considerable respect there
in. He calls attention to the persistence Of
the oId-fashioned conceptions of the scarcity
economy:
THE methods which many business groups
are proposing for curing the depression all
come down to one essential-produce less and
collect more. Rule out new capacity or i'm
proved methods; restrict the output Of present
plants; eliminate price-cutting and other cruel
devices of unrestricted competition; base
prices on the high cost Of producing little;
produce only as much as can be sold at cost
these are typical of the suggestions which
appear over and over again in codes and
agreements, as submitted to the federal recov-
cry agencies"
That Mr.. Ezekiel has little sympathy with
any such policy as a permanent measure in
the battle against depression is evident from
the following straightforward declarations:
Ultimately we must restore our total out
put to what it was in 1929, and even raise it
far above that level, if we are to give all our
citizens even modestly satisfactory standards
of living. . We want higher standards of
living; therefore, We constantly must increase
our output of industrial products. d. If the
centralizing and guiding force of the industry
and trade associations which government
agencies are helping to create should be di-
rected by short-sighted policies or private
profit and not by broader policies of national
welfare, they may in the end destroy the very
economic system they were created to help
restore"
With the exception Of a few VIGOROUSLY
glutted industries, the real problem before
us is not one of limiting production. 1t is
a matter of producing more and of enabling
the masses to buy an increasing range and
volume of products.
Some were scared off by the striking fig
ures produced by the Technocrats, relative
to what we could manufacture by the most
efficient recent methods. What we really need
to do is to put such high-speed methods to
work and to cash in on them in a properly
socialized fashion. This fact has been we'll
emphasized by Robert H. Hemphill.
The depression was not caused primarily by
excessive production but by defective con-
sumption. The latter was an outgrowth Of
inadequate purchasing power on the part of
the American public. notorious lack of
balance developed between productivity and
purchasing power, as result of the hogging
of the social income By the favored few. This
fact was stated forcefully by George B. Parker
in his commencement address before the
University of Oklahoma:
And let us make no mistake in our I'M
derstanding of these terms, overproduction
and underconsumption, about which there
has been so much confusion of thought This
is not a depression due to overproduction.
1t is a depression due to the lack of balance
to which have referred. So long as there
is a Slum in a city SO long as there is an
implanted house on a prairie. or, to carry it
farther, until every home as well as every
railway car is both aforementioned and oper-
ating, so long as there is uglineSs anywhere
on any landscape, so long as peon in Mexico
ekes out sordid existence on few pesos a
day. or a Chinese coone subsists on his pitifuI
ration of rice, the human market for mass
production is there eager to consume. but as
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