75-10-A2
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George Meany and Economics
TranscriptGeorge Meany talking economics reminds me of the fellow who drowned trying to wade across a river whose average depth he'd been told was only three feet. I'll be right back. I knew George Meany some years back, when I was an officer of a union myself, and I like him, but I found myself dismayed by his recent tirade to a congressional committee. The point he made loudly and angrily was that one problem only, unemployment, must be dealt with as if it had no connection with the entire economic situation. He demanded a greater deficit, a hundred billion dollars if need be, to create jobs. He went on to say a big rich country like ours can afford to go in debt. Well, a big rich country like ours can't afford to go in hoc now and then, just as a solid citizen with a paid-up home, some insurance, and a reasonably safe, good income, can borrow to meet the unusual or unexpected such as hospital expenses, or maybe just to see the kids through college. But we're talking about a character who already has a double mortgage on the house, owes installments on the furniture and the car, is borrowed up to the limit on his insurance and is only working part-time. Even the economist so beloved of the liberals, Lord Maynard Keynes, said government should run deficits in bad times to stimulate the economy, but, and it's a much ignored but by those who claim to be Keynesian economists, he said in good times, government should accumulate surpluses and reduce the debt. Franklin D. Roosevelt said a government, like a family, can in time of emergency go into debt but if it continues to spend more than its income, in good times and bad, a government like a family will go bankrupt. Certainly a nation must borrow to see itself through an emergency like World War II but we've kept on borrowing until our national debt is greater than the combined debt of all the other nations of the world. We're not suddenly faced with an emergency debating whether or not to raise a short-term loan. The interest on the debt we already have is ten times bigger than our whole national budget, when we first started running deficits on an annual basis. Yes, we have unemployment and few of any situations seem as tragic and as desperate to me as the person who wants a job and can't find one, but George Meany should know that the government policies he has supported, and still supports, are responsible for this country's insolvency, inflation and the unemployment that inflation brings. He wants a bigger deficit. Here's what the present deficit means to the working people Meany represents. The federal government is taking most of the available money, which should be used to finance plant expansion, to increase production, which reduces inflation and provides jobs. But it becomes more personal. Take those things that we want to buy, on the installment plan. The Treasury Department has already told the banks and lending institutions how much of their capital must be earmarked for funding the government's deficit this year. This means it will become harder and harder to buy things with the usual down payment and the easy installments, and those installments, if you can get them, will include higher and higher interest rates. A bigger deficit means higher inflation, a deeper recession, more unemployment, and there'll be George Meany asking next time for a 200 billion dollar deficit. Sometimes I think the AFL-CIO economic advisors are the kind of economists who have a Phi Beta Kappa key on one end of their watch chain and no watch on the other. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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