A Time for Action
Simon, William
A TIME FOR ACTION William Simon / McGraw-Hill / $10.00 Michael C. Brown When last Mr. Simon was heard from, in 1977 when times were tough and readers of this journal were perhaps just discovering...
...Simon's book had been written a little less colloquially and a little more for the ages...
...What might have been a very interesting back-burner discussion during another Carter-slog Michael C. Brown is editorial assistant at the San Francisco Chronicle...
...Nevertheless, Mr...
...public and private debt, $4.25 trillion...
...But how is a national frame of mind altered...
...through four years suddenly has become a preeminent document in a critical debate...
...Deo volente...
...There is an avuncular, conversational tone throughout that often has an unfortunate lulling effect on even the most attentive reader...
...Benefit concerts...
...ertainly most of us are ready to form ranks after the last four years of liberal'jungle-ball economics...
...Public relations...
...The creation of the now discredited Carter Department of Energy, only three years old and already so bureaucratically involuted that its founder refused to mention the agency during his campaign for re-election, was a typical liberal paregoric used to soothe what Simon calls the no-growth counterculture...
...Simon sees as the overwhelming equation of our current state: Declining standard of living = continued loss of jobs = more government intervention = higher inflation = financial panic and collapse...
...Your reviewer, particularly chuckle-headed in the fields of finance and economics, was mentally and spiritually galvanized by A Time For Action...
...William Simon mercilessly catalogues the economic horror stories of recent years in his opening chapter, "The American Crisis": $180 billion in federal deficits in four years...
...18 percent annualized inflation rate...
...Given the American epidemic regard for one's own mental and environmental "space," and the constant gauging of how one ' 'feels'' in what amounts to almost an obsession with mortality, is it possible to turn back the American ethos to a spirit of freely competitive survival and individual effort...
...Aha, say the liberals and progressives in the audience, more evidence that conservative, Republican economics are simple-minded solutions for the intellectually feeble...
...From President Carter's laughable voluntary wage and price controls and his howler of a balanced budget, to theoretician and guru J.K...
...Simon's book takes the long view in opposition to the short view and maintains the spirit of realism versus the spirit of utopianism...
...The current issue of William Simon's meditations is entitled A Time For Action...
...XJut the subtleties of the methods needed to reverse the regulatory nature of government are missing from this book...
...With the Reagan ascendancy both the title and the brief filed under it assume major importance...
...There were many hard truths in that well-written book, mostly rising out of Simon's years in Treasury under Presidents Nixon and Ford...
...and on and on...
...continued declines in capital investment...
...Depres-sives and those on maintenance doses should absorb this book carefully...
...He does suggest obligatory "economic impact" or cost-benefit findings before a regulation goes into effect, with benefits exceeding costs...
...For this reason I wish Mr...
...Simon sees the Nader-Commoner-Galbraith axis linking the issues of energy and environment to economic growth and whipping what is fundamentally a disorganized, not dishonest, federal bureaucracy into a frenzied control of the economy by government...
...Simon wisely breaks into this appalling litany periodically with illustrations of the quiet truths of American capitalism: Capital investment = productivity = jobs for a growing labor force = increased standard of living...
...But there is no doubt what Mr...
...I sense Mr...
...lowest housing starts since World War II...
...The complex, regulatory nature of federal government emerges as the arch-villain of A Time For Action...
...Simon is a most compelling pamphleteer and A Time For Action stands up as a stirring set of marching orders...
...How is it possible to step into the halls and corridors of the EPA and OSHA and throw down the barriers against wild government paternalism...
...Gal-braith's plot for government to inaugurate a system of income and price restraints over those who have "gained control of prices and of income independent of market restraints ," the past few years have seemed like a conspiracy to separate the average American from an average prosperity...
...From Tom Paine's Common Sense to Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative to William Simon's A Time For Action, clarity and clarion-calls have combined to stimulate both men of action and the clerisy to rise up and shake sense into society...
...Simon was heard from, in 1977 when times were tough and readers of this journal were perhaps just discovering the delights of our departed Wonderboy president, the title of his book then was A Time For Truth...
...Advertising...
...Nonsense...
...Simon is not wholly optimistic on this point...
...total U.S...
...100,000 steelworker jobs lost in a single decade...
Vol. 14 • March 1981 • No. 3
