Show THE VOICE OF BUSINESS Inflation and the politics of m isi nf or ma t ion T By Richard L. President Chamber of Commerce of the United States Isn't it as reports show inflation continuing to get how those In government always find a way to blame the problem on someone In recent the Administration has been doing precisely that-looking else for the cause and solution to a problem which was essentially created in its own back More and inflation is being blamed on greedy businesses and selfish For its the Administration simply says that government alone cannot stop Oh When the Administration recently criticized corporate profits for the end of it blatantly ignored the normal adjustments for inflated inadequate capital consumption allowances and a huge 20 percent increase in federal corporate taxes which were routinely provided by the Department of Commerce and which MUST be included if the profits picture is to be When these adjustments are the figures show that from the fourth quarter of 1977 to the fourth quarter of profits per unit of output increased a small percent in contrast to an overall inflation rate of And the key point is During that same the increase in workers' wages was three times greater than the increase in and the Increase in federal taxes was eight times The Administration has an obligation to clear up this inaccurate Why has it failed to do Look at the facts over a longer If government's influence has been so then during the last 10 why have federal taxes increased more than one and a half times as fast as workers' and nearly two and a half times as fast as corporate Who's been taking money from If business has truly been so robust and how in the world could the stock market today be lower than it was years This whole problem of finding scapegoats for inflation has been going on for During the for many of Washington's so-called experts have also blamed inflation the OPEC reduced meat supplies and bad which reduced other food No one should deny that OPEC's monopolistic pricing is a tremendous economic burden which is contributing to But if the cartel has caused then how can Switzerland and West Germany be enjoying two of the lowest rates of inflation in the while they are simultaneously importing a far greater share of their total energy needs from OPEC than the United Nor is inflation caused by temporary scarcities of some of which are If not manipulated by markets can correct these And weather problems have existed before-for the dust bowl days in the we did not have inflation but we do now in a period of record crops How Let's stop kidding The major driving force behind increase in inflation has been the explosive growth Since the by indulging in a binge of deficit and money more than twice as fast as the economy could produce new goods and the federal government has become the biggest borrower employer in the economy That's The of philosophy are Low inflation once permitted Americans to save a good portion of their earnings-earnings by healthy The investment capital from these savings created tremendous resources in the form of more efficient tools of resulting in technological and in a rapid and sustained increase in our standard of That's why profits don't create they help fight inflation it more difficult to And seeing the dollar's value depreciate so are less to We becoming a nation of Hying paycheck to and dependent upon more and more credit maintain the same standard of Last the United States had the second worst rate of investment of any western industrialized and fewer patents were issued than in any year since Those are warnings of more But bigi government also fuels inflation by pushing up costs and imposing needless Government itself is the most burdensome cost of Taxes have shot up more than one and a half times as fast as the Consumer Price during the past And buried in the price of everything consumers from hamburgers to single-family is the rising cost of taken out in taxes on part of a product's production and But these taxes are usually business bears the blame for higher the federal government inflates all the basic necessities of life even further through its excessive regulatory manipulation of markets and products Propping up the price of milk and limiting planting acreage of corn and placing irrational restrictions on farmers' access to virtually forbidding any exploration for energy or harvesting of lumber on some million acres of placing the nuclear energy industry in a and taxing domestic production of oil while actually subsidizing purchases from OPEC-to cite but a few Will Washington ever heed the Probably to err is bul to blame it on someone else is even more |