Word: cola
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...nation's 35.2 million Social Security recipients are receiving a pleasant surprise this month. Their July checks have been increased by a helpful 14.3%. Like about one-quarter of all Americans, they are receiving a cost of living adjustment (COLA) designed to ease the pain of inflation. As double-digit price rises continue to erode their incomes, many weary consumers see a COLA as the pause that refreshes. But critics charge that automatic income adjustments may push the U.S. economy into a permanent inflation high...
...Federal Government is already heavily hooked on COLA. In the 1981 budget, 42% of all Government outlays will go to programs whose benefits are indexed. These include civil service pensions, food stamps and disability payments. The largest chunk, $140 billion, will go for Social Security benefits, and the latest 14.3% boost has added $20 billion to the budget...
Indexation is also widespread in the private sector of the economy. The United Auto Workers in 1948 negotiated the first labor contract that included a COLA clause. The percentage of employees covered by cost of living escalators has risen from 26% in 1965 to 58% at the beginning of 1980. The current auto agreement, which is typical of those for many major unions, pays workers an extra penny an hour for each three-tenths-point rise in the Consumer Price Index. That has increased the average hourly wage so far this year by 71?, to $9.84. Such escalator provisions usually...
Inflation adjustments are now creeping into other areas of American society. Atlanta landlords, for example, insert COLA clauses in office leases. Divorce settlements often contain a clause that increases child support and alimony payments according to rises in the CPI. California and a few other states have indexed their income taxes. This automatically raises the amount of earnings covered by each tax bracket, thus keeping tax rates the same even though inflation-bloated incomes are increasing...
...Journal's looks at corporate America can send a company's stock tumbling and its executives packing. Reporter John Koten's series this year on executive jockeying at Coca-Cola was especially noteworthy, and not just for the trove of confidential and embarrassing information it turned up. Coke Chairman J. Paul Austin, who was probably more red-faced than anyone, also happens to be a director of Dow Jones. Appearing often on Page One too, are offbeat profiles (an industrial spy, an Alaskan fur trapper), social problems (inflation's ravages, the trials of the elderly...