7 - MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES
from Part II - At the Treasury – Domestic War Finance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2012
Summary
It is editorially convenient to conclude this volume with an account of some of Keynes's activities in the Treasury peripheral to internal finance. Leaving the Arts Council story to another volume, three of the most interesting were war damage compensation, the nationalisation of electricity and corporate taxation.
Keynes's initial success within the Treasury was a war damage compensation scheme which he put to the Chancellor's Consultative Committee at its first meeting and helped push through to the statute book. His three earliest memoranda on the subject appear below.
WAR DAMAGE TO PROPERTY
The present position is, roughly, as follows:–
(1) Ships and their cargoes, stocks of commodities and materials in progress (if they are for resale and have an aggregate value of £1,000—or £200 for foodstuffs—in one ownership) are covered by government insurance schemes subject to certain exceptions.
(2) Immoveable property, plant and machinery, all agricultural produce, stocks excepted from the war risks insurance scheme, motor cars and other vehicles not for resale, contents of houses and other moveable personal possessions are not covered by insurance. The owner has no defined or guaranteed rights.
(3) Nevertheless the Government have undertaken, from the public funds and at the cost of the community as a whole, to pay compensation on ‘the highest scale compatible with the circumstances of the country’ after the war.
(4) This compensation is to be ‘in full up to a certain limit of loss, and thereafter would be graded’.
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- Information
- The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes , pp. 432 - 486Publisher: Royal Economic SocietyPrint publication year: 1978