The Liberal Blinkers Against Inflation

...prospective?-Reagan triumph, generally underestimate the inroads of inflation...

...It has given us a decade scarred by a poor employment record, and by an impairment of social and economic progress that would enhance the working man's lot...

...Those of us who have been appalled by the sadistic approach of the conservative monetarist group, with its beastSidney Weintraub, professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Capitalism's Unemployment and Inflation Crisis and Keynes, Keynesians, and Monetarists...

...And where $25,000 was a rare income a short 15 years ago, it is fairly commonplace in our inflationary times...

...Beyond a handful of professional economists-And the emphasis is on the handful-they have allowed the conservatives to steal the inflation issue and run with it...

...Inflationary...

...In the current economic milieu the tune of the Pied Piper will garner crowds and votes of approval...

...Their purposes would be better attained-with far less distortion and dilution-in a stable price level framework than under the inflation and recession yoke...

...Perhaps this is because liberals, in trying to understand the reasons for the possible-likely...

...A crash energy program to reduce our Mideast energy dependence...

...Aid to make our cities livable, on a scale appropriate to our modern needs or economic capacity...

...all of us apprehend that we would be better off if government were not such an active partner in sharing our income...

...Even though the composition of the unemployed bloc changes, the big disaster of joblessness is confined to relatively few unlucky individuals compared to the impact of inflation...

...So there is the muttering and disaffection in the "housewife vote...

...Unemployment, in contrast to inflation, is more "selective," affecting far fewer people directly...

...Labor and business would have to relinquish some of their past practices in determining money incomes...

...Inflation may lead Americans to turn the clock back with Ronald Reagan...

...Yet American liberal voices betray a shocking illiteracy on these matters...

...If it mounts by as much as 4 million, to 10 per cent, this still means nine out of 10 people in the labor force are employed...

...A decade of fresh professional discussion has passed them by...

...William Miller-Paul Volcker recession is wholly a product of inflation-or, more accurately, of the application of archaic means to fight the price excrescence...

...Assuming they retired on a capital accumulation of $100,000 in 1970, they now find its buying power cut to less than $50,000 of what it was at that time...

...Beyond this homely understanding there is the telling fact that the tax bite digs deeper when earnings increase under our progressive income tax structure...

...The failure to develop an operational response has resulted in the greatest, most persistent inflation in our modern history, and a recession roller-coaster with always incomplete recovery...

...The purpose is to bash labor and to compel, not urge, it to take a more docile wage bargaining stance...

...It delays our advance toward a more humane society, and it gives comfort to those who cherish the view that civilization must abandon its citizens to the vicissitudes of the marketplace, however cruel and crude the outcome...

...Nonetheless, liberals have had literally nothing to offer in the way of conquering inflation...

...it is a universal experience...

...But this need not be a shattering alteration, for labor's well-being depends on real incomes...

...In the bad bargain they have lost elections and sacrificed political influence...

...It particulary depends on relative income growth, rather than on shifts in absolute money totals where all incomes move by the same percentage-leaving the relative position more or less unchanged and making inflation and recession, or the Stagflation Malaise, the only outcome...

...The important point here is that a serious liberal discussion on inflation has not even begun, despite the passage of a decade of difficulty, and that organized labor has been remiss in not taking up this vital issue...

...If it is Carter again, it will similarly be necessary to ward off his propensity for a conservative backslide...

...Price and wage controls simply have no future in the American system, except as a temporary palliative until they rear up the kind of vexations and antagonisms that are bound to lead to their dismantlement...

...Inflation, then, is the bane of liberalism...

...For example, opponents of a better system of national health care-whatever the exact form we favor-Are able to put the package on the shelf, deferred to an unknown future, by denouncing practically any bill as inflationary...

...Some huge constituencies are thus likely to depart from the liberal ranks in November, although their commitment to conservatism is no deeper than their inflation misfortunes...

...And yet, feasible ideas exist for improving the lives of most of us...

...Although recession entails a fall-off in production and jobs, the present Jimmy Carter-G...

...Inflationary...

...his term has given us a dismal economic performance, with higher inflation than in the Nixon-Ford years, and a recession to boot...

...In such an environment the special problems of minorities, both with respect to discrimination and to breaking the hard core ghetto teenage unemployment, would be alleviated...

...It is unrealistic to think that they will endure, if quickly embraced...

...Most other items on the liberal agenda are confronted by the same stumbling block...

...ly recession "solution," have fought the analytic battle with no support, or even any practical understanding, from the liberal community...

...Further, the aspect of women's lib entailing the struggle for better pay and a fairer share of managerial posts would be easier to accomplish...

...Rising prices will be the "invisible hand" pulling GOP levers...

...Of course, there are those naive souls among us who prefer to be ineffective, and to lose on principle-with Barry Goldwater-As they think of an idyllic economy perhaps in the year 3000, instead of in the here and now...

...He has already intimated his support for tip, the tax-based incomes policy that I have espoused in these pages and elsewhere...

...An improved mass transportation network...

...Consequently, as incomes have risen from an average of $5,000 to $10,000 to $15,000, the amount of Federal income taxes has jumped more than proportionately...

...Too inflationary...

...At every turn inflation is the rub...

...Liberal thought has always been concerned with the poor, as judged by their relative place on the income scale...

...This would be enough to sustain 1 million $1 million projects or 20 million $50,000 items, such as new housing units to revitalize America...

...Inflation hits each of us...

...The bait of the tax cut is particularly enticing in our inflationary waters...

...On inflation the liberals wear blinkers, preferring not to see...

...It is not too early to start thinking about these matters, for the myopia bodes ill for the future...

...But all the measures legislated to aid the disadvantaged are robbed of their original intentions by inflation...

...But the main obstruction to a greater abundance of work is inflation...

...This will be enough to attract many voters of a reasonably liberal persuasion who are struggling to balance their home budgets these days...

...Unfortunately, there is one drawback to the conservative therapy: It no longer stops inflation unless it creates a disaster on the Great Depression scale, which can be an even larger threat to the conservative vision...

...If the miracle of John Anderson parting the Potomac waters came to pass, perhaps we would have something new...

...Older people, the euphemistic senior citizens living on more or less fixed incomes, are especially ravaged...

...when compelled to voice a constructive opinion, they respond inflexibly with a stale advocacy of noxious price and wage controls...

...Inflationary...

...Probably no political candidate has ever run on any other platform since the beginning of our republic...

...And our democracy, bereft of confident solutions, is today tripping over problems wherever it turns...

...They operate too inefficiently and require an ineffable bureaucracy...

...People do vote their self-interest...

...Improved environmental, ecological, pollution, or waste disposal practices...

...Liberals are committed to roughly full employment, to providing jobs for all who want to work at prevailing wages and salaries...

...Neither has been a howling economic success in office, yet liberals have been held at bay because they are perceived as lacking in alternatives...

...For example, when unemployment is at a 6 per cent rate, 94 per cent are employed...

...Liberals have abdicated their historical function of shaping the major movements of social and economic progress...

...Yet Howard Jar-vis of California and Republican Congressman Jack Kemp of New York have catapulted to national prominence on the basis of advocating something as "original" as a tax cut...

...I do not want to divert the focus of this article by going into specifics, though...

...Too inflationary...

...In the circumstances, Reagan's superficial observations on reducing government costs and conjuring a big tax cut also will have widespread appeal...

...Better police protection, jail facilities and inmate rehabilitation programs...

...My own view is that practically all of the new constituencies needed to form a Republican coalition that can spell victory next November are tied directly or indirectly to inflation...

...Leaving aside the election liberals seem bent on handing to Reagan, the objectives they espouse that transcend individual office occupants can hardly be achieved while they are wearing their blinkers...

...Union members can be expected to become "inflation Republicans," too, as suspicions grow that there is some validity to the noisy rhetoric about "giveaway" programs, designed to help the underprivileged, despoiling their hard-earned "wealth" and income position in these times of declining dollar value...

...By default they have let the inflation issue be captured by conservatives, who have a cruel, ready remedy for the trouble: the use of monetary policy to create the havoc of recession, and to conscript new recruits to the army of unemployed...

...Inflation will give substance to his denunciation of the bureaucracy, or to his shallow castigation of overregulation, and it will impart poignancy to his promise of a $36 billion tax cut...

...It is absurd, of course, to present a tax cut as a political novelty, an expedient nobody ever thought of before...

...The issue carried Margaret Thatcher to leadership in England, and Menachem Begin to power in Israel...

...Only something of this nature, I am convinced, or a more explicit "Social Compact," as the English trade unionists call it, is capable of redeeming our democracy and turning it into a stable, steady engine of economic and social progress...

...It is in this perspective that many of our Federal programs, from Social Security to unemployment insurance, to food stamps, to Medicare and Medicaid, to minimum wages have been framed...

...Governor Reagan is likely to score heavy voting gains by appealing to the fears of this group-as long as he does not repeat his 1966 inanities, perceived as a threat to its Social Security checks...

...Over the last decade we have lost about $1 trillion of GNP output...

...Indeed, that inflation will be the key issue, the "one in many," to sweep Ronald Reagan into office, is not a far-fetched script...

...It frustrates the liberal objective, and it nullifies the liberal dream as it hands over electoral office to those of conservative ideology...

...Surely our Founding Fathers had some definite opinions about tax cuts...

...In fact, opposition to our proposals has often been more violent from presumed ultimate allies than from the ideological monetarists...

...If it is to be President Reagan, wisdom commands devising some legislative options that look beyond his incumbency...

...It is estimated that each year we lose from $50 billion-$150 billion of output because of our incessant war on inflation through unemployment-inducing monetary measures...

...Other than some useless platitudes about price and wage controls, the intellectual economic cupboard is bare...

...it has a ubiquitous transparency...

...Adam Smith's strictures on self-interest as a motivation do not apply solely to the rich man...

...Even if our own income rises faster than prices, we are distressed at finding our money gains eroded at market-time...

...An even deeper source of consternation is that the liberal community, especially its leaders and intellectual supporting cast, shows almost no discernment of the cause of voter disenchantment...

...for want of a viable anti-inflation program the liberal cause is in disarray...