Word: argumentative
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...jacket informality. He still makes his own telephone calls to Congressmen; no Senator is ever kept hanging on the wire by a secretary. He takes virtually every incoming call ("When I get to Arlington National Cemetery," he sighs, "I'll stop taking them"), even encourages the last little argument, sometimes past the point of productivity. To Persons, it is all part of his job of keeping himself informed-so he can help keep the President informed. "When I am dealing with the President's business," says Jerry Persons, "I am not going to act without adequate consideration...
Christofilos heads a team of 12 to 15 scientists. He still has no degree in physics, and his Greek accent, Greek volubility and love of passionate argument keep him an outsider. (Asked for background on Christofilos, one top U. of C. scientist remarked frostily: "Well, my contacts have been with other members of the scientific fraternity, and Christofilos really isn't a member.") Christofilos takes his position in stride. For relaxation he drives his car (a 1957 Pontiac) or plays the piano loud. "For Nick," says a colleague, "all pieces are written fortissimo...
...phrase now used in every economic argument is "administered prices." It crops up in union charges that business fails to cut prices in response to slackened demand, instead reduces volume and employment. It turns up in management charges that unions have set wages so high that wages, in effect, administer prices, keeping them high. Like an insistent musical theme, the phrase recurs in high-level talk that the Government may have to restore wage and price controls to keep down inflation. Where did the phrase originate? What does it mean...
...been a stick to whack business, whatever the provocation. In the Truman Administration many theorists in Washington charged that the steel companies were administering steel prices too low just to keep out competition that would come in if prices rose to a point attractive to new investment. Now the argument has shifted 180°. The steel companies and others are accused of administering steel prices too high, not reducing them to encourage greater sales and employment...
Most economists of stature smile at the administered-prices argument. John Kenneth Galbraith, Harvard economist, author of the currently popular The Affluent Society, and in no sense an apologist for business, takes the line that a large amount of administered pricing is inherent in the modern economic system. Says he: "Those who deplore it are wasting their breath. The problem is to understand it and to live with it." The overlooked truth that Galbraith and others come back to is that businessmen today cannot operate on prices that run up and down like a boiler-room thermometer. They have...