OCR Text |
Show IKeleased by Western Newspaper Union.) IT TAKES A LONG TIME TO SPEND SEVEN BILLION HOW LONG WOULD it take you to spend $7,000,000,000 if you could call upon Johnny Bull and John Chinaman Chi-naman as assistants, and with all the mass production facilities of American factories and the productiveness produc-tiveness of American and Canadian farms from which to buy? Under those conditions, our Uncle Sam, up to August 31, had worked six months on such a job and had succeeded in actually spending $190,447,670. That is a little less than 3 per cent of the seven billion. If tlrat represents his top spending speed, which it does not, it would mean something more than 15 years to spend all the seven billion congress con-gress gave him last winter. That sum represented what Uncle Un-cle Sam had actually delivered to England and other war-torn democracies democ-racies in the first six-months period. pe-riod. During that time he had either ei-ther delivered or had "on ordei" war materials, ships and food representing rep-resenting a total of $3,555,585,895 and had decided what he would buy, as rapidly as he can get it, up to a total of $6,281,277,421. In the way of quick deliveries, the farms did a better job than the factories. During the six-month pe-' pe-' riod, food represented a total of $118,074,538, with only $72,373,332 from the factories and the shipyards. ship-yards. Of the total purchases Uncle Un-cle Sam has made, ordered or decided de-cided upon, $975,008,578 will come from American and Canadian farms. The old gentleman is stepping on the gas and the next six months should show a much greater spending spend-ing speed than he displayed during the first six months, but we cannot expect him to get through all that seven billion in less than two years. MEETING UNCLE SAM'S HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES BACK IN THE GOOD old days of 1913, which does not seem so very long ago to many of us, our Uncle Samuel picked the pockets of some Americans especially those with plenty to pick from, of the comparatively com-paratively small amount of $668,000,-000. $668,000,-000. By 1922, when we were paying for World War I, he was taking from more of us $3,487,000,000. By 1932 he had eased off to only $1,788,000,000. In 1940 he "nicked" us for $5,556,-000,000. $5,556,-000,000. Now he comes along with a new demand for $13,000,000,000, and has so fixed it that none will' escape contributing a share, for we will pay either directly, indirectly, or both and in practically all cases it will be both. Uncle Sam will charge you $5 a year for the privilege of driving an automobile. That 10 cent movie will now cost you 11 cents. You will pay 5Vz cents on each 1,000 of the wooden matches you use, or you can trpt nuav with tun cpntK nn parh 1,000 paper matches. If you have a telephone, you will pay six per cent of your monthly bill. If you go places by rail, air, boat or bus, 5 per cent of the price of your ticket will be added for your Uncle Samuel. Such are but a few of the many Items we will pay for directly and . know we are paying. Indirectly we will pay on everything we buy. Even with all of this we will not pay enough to meet Uncle Samuel's house-keeping expenses by several billion dollars. Our children and our grandchildren will have to pay the remainder of the bill through many years. If our Uncle Samuel's bill were the only one that is skyrocketing, it woufd not be so bad. Our state and local expenditures have also reached the stratosphere altitude. In IB 1 3 the total of state tax collections collec-tions amounted to $300,000,000. By 1940 they had jumped to $3,028,000,-000. $3,028,000,-000. In 1913 the municipal taxes of all cities, villages and towns amounted to only $1,219,000,000, but by 1940 that had increased to $4,893,-000,000. $4,893,-000,000. For 1941 we Americans will pay in taxes an average of $159 per individual, in-dividual, or $795 per average family of five. And we will pay it whether or not we know it. The tax collectors collec-tors will get it either directly or indirectly, in-directly, or both. TAKEN FOR GRANTED THE ONE INSTITUTION which does most for its community is the newspaper. It promotes the town as a market place. It preserves and advances the town as a social and cultural center. It serves week after aft-er week, year after year, and we take the service rendered very much for granted, without attempting to realize its value. A RECENT issue of Collier's gave the result of a poll of 10.000 American Amer-ican families on the method they preferred for the collection of then-part then-part of the cost of national preparedness. prepar-edness. Of that number, located in all sections of the nation, 60 per cent wanted a national sales tax on their day-to-day purchases. But congress still prefers to use indirect methods in the belief that it is fooling a majority of voters. The man who carries a dinner pail knows he pays, and he would rather know when he pays and how much. |