Moriz Dub, Das österreichische Budget (1923)

Moriz Dub examines Austria’s budget for 1923 as a test of financial reconstruction under League of Nations supervision. His argument combines support for externally enforced retrenchment with doubt about whether projected revenues can withstand economic depression. The opening identifies the constraint on national fiscal autonomy:

Das Budget, welches der österreichische Finanzminister für das Jahr 1923 vorlegt, ist nicht die Frucht freier eigenster Entschließung, sondern das Gebot der Notwendigkeit, eines von außen geübten Zwanges.

English translation: The budget which the Austrian Finance Minister lays before us for the year 1923 is not the fruit of a free resolve of his own, but the command of necessity, of a compulsion exercised from without.

Dub traces the emergency to expenditure increasingly detached from available resources, rising personnel costs, and reliance on the printing press. Foreign credit became indispensable both to cover the deficit and to obtain foreign currency. In exchange, Austria accepted oversight of taxation, expenditure, and administrative reform. Dub treats this supervision as a means of imposing economies that domestic politics had failed to secure. His diagnosis is moral and political as well as financial:

Um die riesenhaft anschwellenden Ausgaben durch harte Selbstbeschränkung und Abwehr selbst zu bremsen, in rauher Politik der Sparsamkeit mit den vorhandenen Mitteln das Auslangen zu finden, dazu fehlte die Kraft und auch der Wille.

English translation: To curb the gigantically swelling expenditures by hard self-restraint and resistance of its own accord, to make do with the available means in a harsh policy of thrift — for this both the strength and the will were lacking.

The revised budget approximately halves the earlier projected deficit, reducing it to 2.35 trillion crowns. Yet this improvement does not establish that equilibrium is easily attainable. Further dismissals affect officials less able to find other employment, while unemployment relief increases expenditure and depressed business threatens receipts. Dub distinguishes the initial intervention from the harder task of sustaining it:

Der zweite Teil des Werkes ist weit schwieriger, weil die Drosselung der Ausgaben, die im ersten Hiebe mit Elan bewerkstelligt wurde, nicht mehr im gleichen Tempo so rasch fortgesetzt werden kann.

English translation: The second part of the work is far more difficult, because the throttling of expenditure, which was accomplished with élan at the first stroke, can no longer be continued so rapidly at the same pace.

The budget’s division into sovereign administration, monopolies, and state enterprises allows Dub to distinguish governmental functions from activities judged by commercial criteria. Personnel expenditure dominates the administration, making restructuring central to reconstruction. His comparison of salaries with revenue conveys the scale of the problem:

Immerhin ergibt sich aber noch immer das niederdrückende Resultat, daß die gesamten staatlichen Einnahmen der Hoheitsverwaltung, die Steuern und Gebühren, nicht dazu hinreichen, die Staatsbeamten vollständig zu entlohnen.

English translation: Nevertheless there still emerges the depressing result that the entire state revenues of the sovereign administration, the taxes and fees, do not suffice to remunerate the state officials in full.

Nevertheless, Dub criticizes dismissals applied mechanically by length of service. Experienced officials disappear, necessary posts require replacements, and severance payments diminish immediate savings. He favors greater reductions among junior staff, whom he considers more adaptable to commercial employment. This preference privileges goods-producing activity over state employment. Party influence, working-hour restrictions, and inefficient staffing likewise enter his explanation of excessive costs.

Revenue policy receives more skeptical scrutiny. Gold-based customs duties, higher existing taxes, and proposed wealth and turnover taxes promise increased receipts, but higher rates do not ensure higher yields. Currency depreciation had encouraged a temporary boom and easy spending; stabilization exposes diminished real purchasing power. Comparisons with prewar burdens consequently mislead when incomes and consumption have contracted. Direct taxation places demanding claims on commerce, industry, and urban taxpayers, while indirect taxation depends on consumers with limited resources. Declining tobacco consumption and railway traffic warn that price increases may fail to enlarge revenue.

Dub extends the reconstruction problem beyond the central state. Provincial and municipal spending absorbs substantial transfers without equivalent external pressure for economy. Although he recognizes the importance of local services, he insists that retrenchment must reach this expenditure. Debt exhibits a contrasting pattern: inflation has reduced the burden of crown-denominated obligations, whereas gold debts remain costly and the League loan will increase them.

The sectoral analysis contrasts profitable monopolies, particularly tobacco, with loss-making enterprises. Railways consume monopoly surpluses; their difficulties arise both from staffing practices and from the breakup of the imperial transport network, which left Austria with costly mountain routes and reduced industrial traffic. Despite his commercial standards, Dub does not regard privatization as an automatic solution. If buyers require state guarantees, transferring ownership leaves public risk intact; capable management remains decisive.

The conclusion distinguishes political obstacles, which external supervision can restrain, from economic conditions it cannot command. Budgetary equilibrium after 1924 remains conditional on recovery and the realization of forecasts. Dub thus endorses fiscal discipline while acknowledging that taxation, employment, consumption, and administrative savings cannot be governed by resolve alone.