The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1935-01-04
THE TOWNSEND PLAN

Yesterday The Times-News gave con-
siderable amount of space to cQmmunI-
cation from w. Bruce Fisher OF Andrews
who signed himself state Organizer, Tor
the Townsend plan, We suppose. 10 pre-
sent the other side of the proposition this
newspaper today quotes Walter Llppman'
we'll known Washington correspondent OF
some of the country's leading newspapers
and for lack of space, we contribute our
editorial space to presentation of the same.
Lippman says:
DIR. F. E. Townsend, of Long Beach, California
has invented a scheme under which he says that
humanity will be forever relieved from the fear
of destituti0n and want" Mr.. Mark Sullivan thinks
that Dr. Townsend has obtained twenty-five million
signatures to petitions for his scheme and that
Congress may be driven to adopt it because the
American people will not have enough common
sense to see what is wrong with it.
The Townsend plan is very simple. 1t proposes:
/. That every man and woman over sixty years
of age shall stop working for gain.
9 That the Federal Government shall pay each
man and each woman over sixty monthly pension
81 SS200. pgasiasa. fysk the pensioner is not an
habitaal eyi1nah and ppsHiee6. second, that he or
she VII take al oath % spend the whole 5000 with
in thirty days as'r'fe~sT
g. That the cost of the pensions be raised by a
general sales tax
Dr. Townsend believes that of the 10,300,000
persons eligible for the pension 100000 will APP
ply for it. At $4,000 year the annual cost of the
Townsend plan would, therefore, be about $19-
200, OOO 900, plus the cost of administering it, or
about twenty billion dollars, This sum has to oe
raised by general sales tax Retail sales this year
have been about thirty billion dollars. So the
Townsend plan would have meant that for every
dollar any one spent in store this year he would
have had to pay an additional seventy cents tax.
Thus, for example, ten cent loaf of bread would
have had to cost seventeen cents, a twenty-cent
gallon of gasoline would have had ito cost thirty
four cents, six hundred dollar car would have
had to cost over thousand dollars. man earn
ing fifteen hundred year would have had to give
up about six hundred dollars of it in taxes. Per-
sons on relief, now receiving on the average of
S25 month, would have had their purchasing
power reduced to SIS a month A disabled vet
eran receiving pension of $50 month would
have been taxed until he had only $50 month 20
spend. Even DR.. Townsends pensioners would not
have had $500 month to spend. They would have
had less than $120 month for more than $50
would have been taken in taxes.
Any one can figure out for himself the minimum
that the Townsend plan would cost him; he has
only to subtract about two-ffths from his experi-
ditures. For every 500 he now spends, he would,
under the Townsend plan have $50 to spend. The
rough arithmetic of the matter is as follows: $50
plus 10 per cent $50 equals $1O2.
Why, them does Mr. Townsend think he has
found way of making every one richer? His ar
gument is as follows; If the 100000 persons
sixty stop working, there would be 5000 900
more jobs for the persons under sixty IT, at the
same time, these 100000 would each spend ST.
400 a year they would create trem endous de-
mand for goods and labor
This amounts to saying that if there were few
err persons working and if those who do work would
spend more, the country would be richer. If that
is so, then why stop with pensions of 50, 400 for
persons over sixty Why not $4,000 pensions for
persons over forty? Or $4,000 pensions for per-
thirty? What can be said against these
proposals that MUST not also be said against the
Townsend plan?'
DR.. Townsends error, hes in forgetting the SIM
pie truth that some one must produce the wealth
which is consumed by the non-producers, be they
infants, old people, sick people, the unemployed
the Idle rich, the criminal classes If DIR. Town
sends medicine were a good remedy, the more
people the country could find to support in idle
ness the better off it would be.
Dr. Townsend is in my opinion public bene-
factor He has succeeded in inventing a eonun-
drum which reduces to absurdity whole mass
OF ideas that have had great vogue during tn