OCR Text |
Show GERMANY'S GREAT NATIONAL DEBT Financial Experts View Steady Increase of Liabilities With Growing Concern. NEW YORK, Feb. 21. Tho steady Increase in Germany's national debt owing to the war and the delay in adopting a swooping plan of taxation reform to care for tho increased liabilities liabil-ities of the empire, already more than twenty times higher than "the national debt at tho outbroak of tho war, I3 a source of constant concern to Gorman financial exports. In the Berlin Tageblat of January 5. Arthur Norden, the paper's financial export, sharply criticizes tho failure of tho government to provide for any redemptiou of tho war debt asido from a proviso establishing a redomption fund for the -1 V2 per cent treasury certificates cer-tificates which formed a small p'art of the last two war loans. Ho calls for radical measures to check tho piling up of tho burden of war indebtedness. Great Brltains' War Policy. Norden contrasts with tho policy of Germany, which, as Ib known, has nnt provided oven enough increased taxation taxa-tion to meet the Intorost on Its war debt and is paying a part of tho interest in-terest coupons of earlier war loans from new borrowings, with that of Groat Britain, which, he points out. had raised by taxation almost 25 per cent of its war expenditures down to tho end of 1917. The argument that a heavlor taxation taxa-tion of war profits, which mako up the bull; of tho nominal increaso in Germany's Ger-many's capital, would interfere with tho productiveness of Gorman industry and tho fear that Increased taxation of incomes would kill tho war-willingness of the population aro dismissed as unfounded. In fact, Mr. Norden argues, to attack tlio abnormally high war Incomes attained in certain indUB-trios indUB-trios and by certain oleraonts of tho population would be of decided value In cutting down tho high cost of living liv-ing resulting from the extravagant standards of life among tho war profiteers. profi-teers. America Admirable Example. Norden cites the action of the American Amer-ican government In establishing maximum maxi-mum prices for steel and other raw materials of war Industry and In Immediately Im-mediately Introducing high war taxes as an ndmirablo example for Germany to follow and speaks with admiration of tho Wilson plan of taking control of tho railroads. Norden's scheme for taking care of the state debt comprises a radical Increase In-crease in the tax on incomes, not upon capital as generally contemplated by-German by-German financiers. Ho holds that tho proposed taxes upon capital meroly lead to extravagant spending, while Lho income tax can bo so adjusted to beat heaviest upon the recipients of high war incomes. |