78-08-B4

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Money

Transcript It is easy to dismiss anemia of the dollar as due to the high price of imported oil, but don't look too closely at that excuse if it gives you comfort to believe it. West Germany and Japan import all of their oil, not half and their currencies are very robust. It won't make you feel better to know that an editor of National Review magazine more than 10 years ago - long before there was an oil crisis - wrote a book called Death of the Dollar. In it he prophesied exactly what was going to happen to the dollar - and it has. Among the causes he listed for the dollar's predicted problems were inflation, government hobbles on enterprise, payment for not working and punitive taxes on saving, investment and honest labor. All of these and more have been standard during these past 10 years. Incidentally, for whatever part that high-priced imported oil has played in our spiraling inflation, here is one example of how we've dealt with that problem. A federal judge in Massachusetts issued an injunction prohibiting the sale of oil exploration leases for the Georges Banks off Cape Cod on the grounds that "irreparable" ecological harm would follow such exploration. What are the facts? In 25 years, from 1950 to 1975 the total annual catch of fish in Massachusetts dropped from almost 600 million pounds to less than 300 million without any oil or gas drilling activity. In Louisiana where there was great offshore drilling and production the fish catch increased 400 percent. But look at the evidence of some of those other factors and their inflationary effects - government regulation for example. A new car this year will cost almost $700 more than it should because of federal regulations. This was listed in a report by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress along with a finding that government red tape at all levels was adding about $2,500 to the cost of a new home. The study set the total cost to business (and therefore the public) for complying with federal regulations alone at 20 times the cost of operating the multitude of agencies. It will come to about $100 billion this year. Some time ago on one of these broadcasts I told of how the Renegotiation board, slated to go out of business in 1976, had made itself virtually permanent by way of its backlog and by taking upon itself tasks it was not set up to perform. It is, by the way, a temporary board set up during the Korean war to renegotiate contracts where it is believed there have been over-charges to the government. Senator Lugar of Indiana has reported to a Senate appropriations subcommittee that the board in the last two years has cost the government from three to $10 for every dollar in excess profits it recovers. It's a small agency. If Congress can't kill it why should we believe Congress can save us from the entrenched leviathans of bureaucracy? It will only do so when we the people tell our Congressmen the agencies go or they go. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 78-08-B4 Production Date 06/05/1978 Book/Page RPtV-314 Audio Youtube? No
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