How restaurants generally are reacting to the removal of the
5s. limit on meals 1 have not discovered from personal experience, but the fact that the shares of both hotels and restaurants have risen as a result of the Minister's action does not suggest that the public is likely to gain financially by the change, though it may gastronomically. An odd—but significant—comment comes from a Left Wing journal which thinks it intolerable that the trade unionists' wages should be pegged while the rich are free to squander what they like on food. Apart from the confusion of thought —comparison is of course between income and income, not between income in one case and expenditure in the other—here is a plain indication that, in some minds at least, after you have taken any- thing up to two-thirds of a man's income by taxation you must regulate his expenditure of what is left, not merely by the legitimate method of rationing foods of which the supply is limited, but by preventing him from paying what he chooses to pay for food falling outside that category. If he spent 30s. on every meal it would not
increase his income by a farthing. Personally I think 3s., not 30s., is the right price for a meal, but if the trade unionist is free to spend what he likes on tobacco or exciseable liquors or football pools or dogs, why should the same freedom be denied to the overtaxed, so-called rich ?
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