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Monday, October 14. 1974
University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
WORSE, THEY EVEN LAID ME OFF FROM BUILDING-
THE POOR HOUSE THEYRE SENDING ME TO'
Naive ideas about inflation
Editor's Note: The author of this column is a professor of economics at the University of Alabama and is a teacher at the Kansan opinion page.
By LELAND PRITCHARD
Since Professor A. W. Phillips of the London School of Economics constructed a curve
that indicated high rates of inflation were associated with low rates of unemployment and vice versa, there has been much talk in and out of academic circles about the "trade-off" between inflation and unemployment.
Most economists are now sophisticated enough to realize that if such a trade-off does exist, it is a very shortrun phenomenon. Data on the U.S. economy on the last decade reveals no such inverse relationship between rates of inflation and rates of unemployment as the Phillip's curve suggests. What the data do show is that rates of unemployment have clustered around an average of 4.9 per cent, and the rate of unemployment has increased the rate of unemployment, has moved progressively higher since 1965.
Thus for the period 1955-64 the rate of inflation (based on the Consumer Price Index) increased at an annual rate of 1.4 per cent. Unemployment force in 1955 was a work force in the same period. In the nine and one-half years from 1965 to June 1974, the
annual rate of inflation has averaged about 5 per cent and the rate of unemployment about 4.6 per cent. During the last four and one-half years (1970 to June 1974) the rate of inflation averaged about 3 per cent higher than the rate of unemployment about 5.3 per cent. And for the full year of 1974 we may have a 10 to 11 per cent rate of inflation associated with a 6 plus per cent rate of unemployment. If there is an unemployment, if there is an off curve, it is shifting to the right, and at an accelerated rate.
nervously, unemployment can be a permanently reduced to a "tolerable level" of 4 to 5 percent simply by pumping aggregate demand is both native and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has evidently acted on the assumption that monetary policy could play a major role in solving the problem of chronic unemployment. This is made evident in the published policy report of the FOMC, and by a comparison of the periods in which a restrictive monetary policy was followed in the periods of easy money policy. Except for parts of the years 1966 and 1969 and June to August 1974, policy actions have been directed toward stimulating production and employment. A short period only times when money growth was held to minimal inflation levels.
restricted output and employment and the smaller the degree of downward price flexibility. Under these conditions, unless money expands or if rate prices are being pushed up, could not be sold and hence the work force would be cut back
Confronted with this dilemma, our monetary policy makers have, since 1965, almost no money to supply. Our money supply at a rate far in excess of the expansion of real output, thus more than validating the corporate and financial markets created the dilemma originally.
I use the word minimal because it is impossible for monetary policy to stabilize prices without inducing intolerable levels of unemployment. The monopolistic nature of monoplastic pricing practices of our product markets, and, to a limited extent, of our labor markets. It is axiomatic that the smaller the degree of price competition in a market and the greater the demand for goods from monopoly power over prices and output, then the higher the amount of unit prices, the greater the tendency for
Had the Federal Reserve Board expanded the money supply by less than 2 per cent annually during the past decade rather than by an excess of 6 per cent. It has been much smaller, probably not exceeding an average of 4 per cent despite the Vietnam War. However, with such a restrictive monetary policy, and the absence of any governmental countermeasures, unemployment have reached unacceptably high, perhaps as high as 7-9 per cent at times.
But it isn't within the power or responsibility of the Federal Reserve to hold unemployment benefits, so fact, to assume that the Federal Reserve can solve our unemployment problem is to assume the problem is so simple that its costs are low. The manager of the Open Market Account buy a sufficient quantity of U.S. obligations for the accounts of the 12 Federal Reserve banks. This is utter naive.
To reduce both the rate of unemployment and the rate of inflation to acceptable levels requires fundamental structural changes in our product and labor markets. Some contribution to solving the problem should be achieved through measures that would increase the necessary qualifications of the labor force and that would produce a speedier matching of
What could be done to reduce or eliminate barriers to competition, to create a market structure in which there was no clear pricing? And upward price flexibility? Here are a few suggestions:
workers and jobs. But the crux of the unemployment-inflation problem arises from the excessive amount of monopolistic product markets and, to a lesser extent, our labor markets.
-Eliminate Buy America Act provisions, tariffs, import quotas, customs "red tape" and classification practices that restrict imports. Limit Export-Import bank credit to those organizations with exports are at an artificial disadvantage.
—Abolish all resale price maintenance laws. Conduct antitrust actions on the basis of the most economical size of the corporation or corporations to a size that would achieve minimum unit costs at optimum rates of output. Rate of output, including conglomerate and holding companies, first degree, and severely restrict vertical as well as horizontal corporate aggregations. This is to say, bringing corporate ownership conducting unrelated activities under a single corporate roof, from expanding in order to broaden their share of the market or from controlling ownership or high ownership or legal devices.
- Repeat the Davis-Bacon Act and similar laws concerning union wage pay paid under government contracts and juvenile minimum wage laws. Eliminate union provisions that put excessive restrictions on apprenticeships or require ex-employment entrance fees, and abolish halls operated by unions.
reasonable zone as determined by variable costs. The Aviation Act should be amended to make discount air fares legal. Subsidies for ship construction and operation should be repealed.
-Eliminate meat and dairy import quotas. Do not regulate the wellhead price of natural gas. Outlaw state pro-rating of gas. Permitermine crude petroleum allocation control价 and reform pipeline legislation to make pipelines common carriers. Use severance and other unit taxes as conservation measures to prevent windfall profits and as sources of revenue to subsidize transportation and reduce the tax burden on the poor.
—Remove all route and other restrictions in existing trucking licenses. Railroad rates should be made more competitive by requiring the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to automatically approve rate schedules if they fall in a
—Do not subsidize barge traffic. Enlarge the use of existing government purchasing and distribution methods under a common contract to make the prices of drugs, medical supplies and equipment more competitive, and require all drugs to be sold under their generic names. Require that products be sold by standard grades established by the FDA, and that prices be posted by unit (per quart, egg, etc.).
-Repeal restrictive building codes that have the effect of unnecessarily raising construction costs without substantiative to the safety or efficiency of the structure.
Jealousy foils Pearson group
Jeffrey Stinson Associate Editor
For the past four and a half years, three professors and a few hundred students at the University of Kansas have been teaching and learning classical literature. They have been studying and practicing the liberal arts of astronomy, rhetoric and music. They have endeavored to integrate their studies with trips to the lands where the literature and music were written and the great discoveries of Western Europe, they they the Old English script. They sit around and speak Latin. They even have lived as did early settlers in the New World.
For their studies and practices, these professors and students have been called usurpers of home and family, religious sectarians, arrogant and authoritarian, and they have even been termed irrelevant. They are considered academic criminals by many of their colleagues and fellow students for their studies and practices of the liberal arts and humanities. They have been the managers of large scale manhunts by their colleagues and have tempted be made to lock them into a cell separate from the norms of "traditional" secular education at this University.
These criminals are participants in the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program, a program that has heroically tried to preserve a semblance of academia at this University in the face of an onslaught led by tenured medicority, who have been spurred by professional jealousy, possible threats of unemployment and a distorted view of academic freedom.
The first wave of attack against this program came during its infancy. There purportedly was a shortage of classrooms at the University and if the program was to continue to exist, it would have to find its own. The program did. The Kansas School of Religion, fraternities and sororities offered space so that the program could live.
Do you think that corporation managers and labor leaders will cease to exploit their economic powers and that Congress, state legislatures, city councils and the national government bullies?" I don't. Because we are unwilling to make the individual sacrifices that would significantly increase competition in our product and labor markets, and because the federal government is committed to hold unemployment to a minimum, prospects are a prolonged, indefinite period of underemployment and concomitantly an excessive rate of inflation.
When a lack of space couldn't extinguish the program's fire, a concerted offensive against the program was mounted in the spring of 1973 by professors and some students, who detested the program, in the College Assembly of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The program's courses were based on the college's courses from being a substitute for freshman and sophomore requirements in English, speech, humanities and Western civilization. The detractors succeeded in their offensive and the
effect was to discourage students from entering the program because students wouldn't have enough time to complete the program and the necessary requirements for graduation in four years.
The offensive was led in part, by many professors of English, speech, and Western civilization, the departments that stood to lose students and consequently money and professors if the program attracted too many students. If although students in the Pearson program read Homer, Plato, Aesop, Virgil, Cicero, Plutarch, Caesar, the Old and New Testaments, "The Song of Roland," Chaucer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Describes, Hume, Rousseau, Voltaire, Goethe, Presidents Marx and others, George Worth, professor English, said it that the entire English department "does not feel that Pearson Integrated Humanities replaces English 1, 2 and 3." And James Seaver, director of the Western civilization program, said, "I think the Pearson concept of liberal education is an antithetical to what I believe is liberal education."
Many of the program's critics say Pearson doesn't allow for opposing viewpoints, and academic freedom, therefore, doesn't exist. Should anyone find Mark, Freud, the Old Testament, Rousseau and Plato in agreement on philosophy of life, then let the argument stand.
The program is popular. Participants stand steadfastly by it and this is cause enough for professional jealousy. But the program also threatens to take away students from departmental courses. And when a department is founding, and when the number of the department's students enrolled in the department's number of students enrolled in the department's classes, there is cause for more than jealousy.
The program received another setback Thursday, when the Educational Policies and Procedures Committee of the College decided to study a new program request to study in France next semester.
But it's time that students and professors who have their heads stuck in the psuedo-academic quagmire of the psychology of sex, the literature of baseball, the sociology of sport and salivating substances, the science of the liberal arts and humanities and quit castrating one of this University's finest programs.
Audience transported by play to night of glitter and stardust
Opening night of "The Fantastics," at Hassinger Hall was a rewarding experience for those who attended. One was the winner, and others went world and be carried away into a night of glitter and stardust
By MARGARET McMANN Theatre Reviewer
for a while. But, as the script says, "Life never ends in the moonlit night."
The play is done very professionally, with makeshift scenery and props, probably because the Hashinger Hall Theater budget isn't large, but mostly because this is the type of film that Hassler does. Accordingly, there are many "asides" and speeches said directly to the audience, thus, involving it even more.
The cast is small, totaling eight, but it provides a fine example of ensemble acting. The narrator, played by Rob Davis, doubles as the gallant and intelligent playmate as the play together. Rob has a strong deep singing voice perfect for "The Rape Ballet" and "Try to Remember," and he is able to handle the more
conversational style that the role of the narrator demands
Jim Stringler plays the role of Matt, the boy. His versatility facial expressions combine with his clear, controlled voice to help him make the difficult change from being starry-eyed-in-love to being disillusioned with natural and comfortable an stage, something that is refreshing to see.
The other young romantic is played by Debbie Thomson. She has a slightly shy, halting air which, added to her naive look, really makes believable her presentation of the 16-year-old girl. Her voice isn't strong, but is dim and clear. She is the most easyly imagine as running through fields of flowers.
The fathers of the couple interacted beautifully with each other, especially during their wedding. The "Rape Ballet," they provide the audience with the highlight of the play. They even do an old soft-sleeve routine. The girl on the dance floor Mooney, probably looks more the part of a father with his shorter hair, but both come under the same older generation who wish to bring up children were as
Entremont's a bargain if he's free
Friday you could have heard him absolutely free (and saved plane fare, too)—surely a bargain too great to pass up. It was one of the fabulous opportunities offered them by the Concert Series.
Although Philpe Entremont is far from being a great pianist, there was enough good playing during Friday's Concert Series recital to justify attendance by even the most critical. Which raises the question: Why were there empty seats? You'd pay about $10 to hear him play in New York;
Opening with a competent performance of Mozart's "Sonata in A Major," Entremont immediately displayed
By DENIS MOREL
Things took a turn for the worse in the following fourth "Ballade" and second "Sonata" of Chopin. As the difficulties
a penchant for pedal and rubato-perhaps distressing to parists, but not bad if you like your Mozart a bit romantic. or arbitrarily lengthening, certain notes while shortening others.
escalated, muddy passages were became evident. Entremont's rhythmic tendencies, held back somewhat in deference to traditional Mozart style, were unleashed in Chopin, to the tune of 'Moonlight Sonata', you rubau on every second no more do you do when something really special occurs? It's a little like the fable of the bow
who cried, "Wolfe."
A beautifully chosen and well played Debusy group constituted the evening's high point.
The program ended with a 20th century masterpiece, Prokofye's second "Sonata." This work exemplifies Prokofye's ability to synthesize the old with the new—the hot
Banking astutely on the work's relative unfamiliarity, Entremont gave a performance and never get him into Jullard.
could be Beethoven, but the wine is pure Prokofiev, a combination of driving intensity, exquisite lyricism, mordant humor, irony and the erosesque.
uncomplicated as growing plants.
the girl's father, seemed a little harsh, but that may have been the effect. Some actors to the audience at times.
The two men who play Henry and Mortimer, Joe Melland and Harris Severn, are funny, but then the rest of the characters, then the rest of the characters,
While everyone else was theatrically playing more to the audience, they seemed to be playing it more for realism. But in contrast, however, and were consistent and believable.
Lois Gearhart plays the Mute, an interesting character, dressed in black, who walks about the stage unobtrusively, taking care of props and set pieces. She is only briefly by "She's not supposed to talk." Although she needs to polish up her pantomime a bit by making her actions more clear cut, she
helps tie the show together into a unified whole.
The strong points in "The Fantasticks" most definitely cutweigh any minor problems encountered, such as the heat in the small room used as the desk or the play this play to anyone who believes in the moon, or first loves, or life.
The choreography, music and use of available stage space was excellent. They didn't overtake the scenes, but flowed with them. However, the lighting probably because there is little room for instruments to be hung.
The play will be performed again Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m. in Hashing Theater.
The audience was very appreciative. Even when the catch on Louisa's necklace refused to be undone at the right time, the moment became a funny moment became a funny instead of an embarrassing one.
T atter litt h / pro On The Kat Sep T ahos jum
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