The Four Year Itch
Nollson, John
"The Four Year Itch" I was heading up Highway 80, the famous interstate campaign...
...In fact," I added, "you won't have to worry about me...
...You won't be like the others, will you...
...You can only imagine that the cause of inflation is people working if it is your habit Tom Bethell is the Washington editor of Harper's and The American Spectator's Washington columnist...
...But such thoughts were nothing if they were not an indication that I could do with a cup of coffee and maybe even some breakfast...
...I took advantage of that awkward moment of silence to get a better look at her...
...Mo," I said, "I have my Buick Electra parked outside, and it's loaded with options...
...But people working also help to make things, to supply things...
...She was no longer young, and her eye makeup could not hide it...
...She looked up at me, and a faint smile came to her sad eyes and played for an instant about her tired face...
...But I'm not the fickle one...
...We used to have a lot of those big 18-wheelers pull in, but now we're lucky when even an old Dodge pullin' a U-Haul comes by...
...Even with spring just arrived, it was still cold in Kentucky...
...He'll make it look like I picked him up and took/vim for the ride, but it's really the other way 'round, you see...
...Mo," I said, " i t ' s a sad story you have to tell, but it's not the first time something like this has happened...
...Wages, prices and profits no more cause inflation than wet streets cause rain...
...Which way are you headed...
...Just by lookin' at you," she said, "I can tell you're a real gentleman...
...He'll say that I left him on the side of some dark road in the middle of nowhere, and I won't be around to defend myself...
...I was reasonably alert...
...There was one other, a woman, seated so far off in a corner that I hadn't noticed her at first...
...I had seen a lot in my time and there was one thing I had learned: There was no such thing as a Good Samaritan Act in this business...
...Therefore, the solution is to cause a recession, knock people out of their jobs...
...Inflation, it seems, is caused by too much consumer spending, people "demanding" too much...
...He was so nice to me...
...Not a chance," I said...
...Federal regulations had caused all the billboards to be removed...
...Demand will drop, prices will stabilize, and inflation will go away...
...I could see that years of heavy traffic had caused potholes to appear, and some of the lines were in need of repainting...
...a candidate was pinned down in a fusillade of small-arms fire directed by the National Rifle Association...
...And we won't have to worry about food or fuel, because I've got my campaign credit cards, and I don't think they're going to take them away from me...
...She was a rather large and altogether striking woman, well put together, to use the idiom of the region...
...And I had thought he wouldn't be like the others...
...to think solely on the demand side of the economic equation...
...This pattern of economic thought, truly dismal, is based on the "Phillips Curve" (named after a British economist), which purports to demonstrate a trade-off between unemployment and inflation...
...Hello, Mo," I said with a smile, as I introduced myself...
...Sometimds, one wondered whether it was a campaign road at all...
...I would expect no more for myself if the big Buick were to give out on me...
...One of the reasons for this is that government officials themselves exist purely on the demand side of life...
...What's your name...
...Was Mo nothing but one of those campaign groupies, waiting to be driven off by the first handsome aspirant who winked at her...
...Somehow his wife will find out that he's traveled a thousand miles with a girl half his age, but I'll get all the blame...
...The counterman set out a mug of coffee and retreated into the kitchen to fix the eggs, toast, and fried potatoes I had ordered...
...All I knew was that, if Mo were right, then I'd really have to think about things in a new way...
...We ate nothing but steak for dinner and, after dinner, w e l l . . . " I guess I knew what she meant...
...Nor was she happy...
...Him and his baby blue Volvo--just gone...
...Please sit down...
...We stayed at the best motels on the way up the highway...
...Little wonder that these kinds of cures for inflation are both unpopular and ineffective...
...They always do...
...QOQIQ0Q4Qq0Qgjg000O0QIIQI~6g0~gmI0Q0I00G0080QIQQOgQg0OQQ~oD0QQQQQ~40QQ0~QiQO0IIQQ6Q4gQl~0QO~Id48QQQIOgqIg0QQBQ0Q8QQQiq~Q0~QgggD0g06QiiOag0~ggI00 On March 19, a day or two after the market responded to President Carter's fourth and latest anti-inflation program by falling 23 points, its biggest drop in months, Art Pine wrote in the Washington Post: The new signs of heightened economic slowdown generally were welcomed by the Carter Administration, which is seeking to dampen consumer spending in an effort to slow the inflation rate...
...Very few people in o,~cial Washington have managed to think on the supply side for 40 years at least...
...I'm bound for Detroit, so I'll give you a ride all the way there, or I'll let you out anywhere along the way...
...No place in particular," she answered, "and if there was, I don't have any way to get there...
...Maybe you'd like some company," I said...
...Those periodic calls for help, broadcast out into the night by various candidates, had helped to keep me awake...
...I took the next exit and was fortunate to find a diner truck-stop with its lights on, with a half-ton pickup parked in the lot...
...But when I got back to the parking lot, he was gone...
...As a New York Times editorial said on the same day, I suppose with a touch of irony (hard to tell): "The best the President can hope to achieve now is a speedy descent into recession...
...An economic theory--Keynesianism--which operates only on the demand side is bound to have a certain appeal and cogency to such people...
...If you see that, then you are thinking on the supply side...
...The eatery appeared to be deserted, except for the counterman, who seemed pleased to see me...
...Maureen," she answered, "but ever since I was a little girl, my daddy called me Mo, and that's what all my friends have called me ever since...
...As I got accustomed to the place, I realized that I was not the only patron...
...The guys like to think I've jilted them, and that's the way they tell it, but it's not that way at all...
...18 AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1980 I had to admit that I'd never heard the story told quite that way before...
...It wasn't four hours when we stopped at this place so I could visit the ladies' room...
...00OIQ0O000QQgO0O00iQ0B0000iIO~OB0q0000D00e~000~00gQO0000DgI00O000~00OOQOg~0I0BOIgQo0Q00I~00QQ0OI~o00o000gI0Q000QiiQQ00mIIQoQQDQgQQ00Q00 I was heading up Highway 80, the famous interstate campaign road that connects Florida with the Midwest, making very good time in the Buick Electra I had rented from Avis with my campaign credit card...
...It was about three a.m...
...I asked...
...She had very attractive red hair, but here, too, it was obvious that the sheen was not wholly natural...
...I thought I was going to Chicago--at least that's what he said when he offered to drive me there from Miami...
...Everybody had to fix his own fiat tires...
...These "cures" follow from the idea that individuals cause inflation through their wage and price greed, and that the government had no hand in the decline of the value of its currency...
...She had a table all to herself and, as I studied her, she seemed not unattractive...
...and I was now in Kentucky...
...In fact, I'm kind of lonely myself...
...I t can get kind of lonely out here on the campaign road in the middle of night...
...By now, the counterman had brought my eggs over to the table and, as I sprinkled pepper on them, I could not deny that Mo was the kind of woman worthy of a gentleman's best efforts...
...Two or three times an hour, I picked up those anxious voices describing the familiar accidents: a media blitz had jackknifed, trapping the candidate in the cab...
...I had never heard a country-music song with this particular theme, so I couldn't know for sure...
...You've got one of those shirts with little buttons on the collar, like only real gentlemen wear...
...W e l l , " said Mo, in a voice shaded with the wisdom that only deep experience and hard living can provide, "I'll go with you...
...Here is what Rep...
...This, the paper added, "used to be called the 'Republican Solution' " to inflation...
...But the romance was still there, and I felt contented and snug inside the Buick as it sped along the highway, highbeams blazing, since, to tell the truth, there were no cars coming in the opposite direction...
...The more you have of one, the less you have of the other...
...What'll it be...
...I had become accustomed to those pleas born of anguish and despair, propelled through the darkness by mobile CB transmitters, yet I was now hardened to them...
...Jack Kemp of New York has to say about the Phillips Curve in his estimable book, An American Renaissance: A Strategy for the 1980s* : The public is often told that curing inflation requires higher taxes, higher unemployment, slower economic growth and a ceiling on pay increases...
...And her clothes, though not too tightly-fitted, nonetheless conveyed a sense that there was a lot of woman packed into that attire...
...I picked up my mug of coffee and walked over to her...
...That's the way the guys talk, you know, so how can a girl protect her reputation ? Even his wife will forgive him...
...Or was she, as she claimed to be, nothing but the victim, sweet-talked, then abandoned...
...I eased the Buick into a parking spot, got out, and turned up my collar against the chill...
...if their activity is withdrawn from the economy then there will be a reduction of supply that is at least equivalent to their reduced consumption (demand...
...a candidate, abandoned by those who had purported to love him, was behind the wheel all by himself, with nothing but the plaintive music of a nearby country-and-western station to keep him company...
...I had been monitoring the emergency channel on the CB radio...
...I'm the one with a difference...
...But inflation is not caused by workers working, businesses doing business, consumers consuming or producers producing...
...I had asked for scrambled eggs, having sensed in advance that there was no use asking for shirred eggs with a side of creamed spinach...
...In fact, she was picking at her own scrambled eggs in an absent-minded fashion...
...This is fairly representative of the conventional wisdom on such matters...
...Here, as elsewhere in his book, Kemp is addressing the most important problems facing the United States today, nearly all of which derive," in one way or another, from the encrustation of many decades of faulty *Harper & Row, $8.95 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1980 19...
...Business has slowed down some here the past couple of weeks," he said...
...Then they won't have paychecks, and they will stop showing up in the stores in the guise of consumers demanding goods...
...But you're the one who'll end up deciding how far we ride, not me...
...When she spoke, her inflection revealed her to be a woman of rural origins...
...They consume mightily, but they produce next to nothing...
...I had been traveling that road since it was first widened to four lanes many years ago...
...I know that," she said, "but I know how be will tell the story...
...But not everyone in government accepts the Keynesian model...
Vol. 13 • May 1980 • No. 5
