OCR Text |
Show : 1 - i CONGRESSIONAL REPORT ! BY DAS' MARRIOTT j One of the greatest needs we have in this country is to create jobs. It's not an easy subject to address, but let me give you some new perspectives per-spectives and see if they make sense. First of all, we need to get a good picture of what unemployment un-employment actually is and then go about reducing it without creating other problems prob-lems potentially more serious, ser-ious, like inflation. The tendency of government that is, Congress and the President is to declare de-clare the problem a crisis, draw up emergency legislation legisla-tion calling for massive expenditures, ex-penditures, thus increasing the public debt and sparking spark-ing a new round of inflation. I'm referring, of course, to the latest Humphrey -Hawkins bill, which will see some kind of action next spring. This so-called full employment bill makes a modest effort at encouraging encourag-ing private jobs in Industry and then makes the government govern-ment the employer of last resort. Incidentally, on the average it costs the taxpayers taxpay-ers from $10,000 to $25,000 for each job the government creates. In private industry that same expenditure by consumers nets not only the job but a product or service ser-vice as well. To make matters worse, structure the public works i program and develop private employment for the disad- j vantaged through a wage sup- . plement. I would add that we should enact tax measures that will encourage private investment but, most importantly, impor-tantly, put spendable Income in the hands of individuals through an overall permanent perman-ent tax cut. Unemployment is a serious ser-ious problem. It cant be explained well in a short time, let alone solved. But the fact is It affects the stability of the Individual, his family, our society, and the government. We need to approach ap-proach a solution with the long pull in mind, not short-term costly programs that kindle inflation. In the Hudson study, Dr. Leveson concludes, "Present "Pre-sent indications are that unemployment un-employment will not be substantially sub-stantially lower over the next decade than over the last. . . Many issues and complexities complex-ities arise in structuring efforts ef-forts to deal with unemployment. unemploy-ment. An essential starting point is that the measures meas-ures which are developed build on the strengths of the private as well as the public pub-lic sector." I heartily endorse Dr. Leveson's conclusion and am watching the Humphrey -Hawkins bill, as well as other public employment measures, meas-ures, with great scrutiny. . I want to be able to solve the unemployment problem without creating another one in its place. corporate profits are depleted deplet-ed and companies don't have sufficient capital to create new permanent jobs. In the end inflation kills, not cures, i in a recent study by the Hudson Institute, Dr. Irving Leveson said aggressive efforts ef-forts to drive unemployment rates below 6 percent add too much to the rate of Inflation, which In turn disrupts the stability and expansion of the economy and actually creates higher unemployment. unemploy-ment. It works like this: Inflation leads to higher interest in-terest rates, money is harder hard-er to get, the housing industry in-dustry suffers, businessmen are unable to pay the rising ris-ing costs of new plants and equipment, and are unwilling unwil-ling to take the risks Involved Involv-ed In order to grow. As a result, the overall rate of economic growth slows down, bringing about even higher unemployment rates than we started with. We're worse off than before. That doesn't leave us without with-out a solution, however. Dr. Leveson suggests we re- |