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...week's end the triple-digit temperatures that first appeared in the Sunbelt late in June had directly or indirectly caused the death of more than 1,000 people in a triangle of 20 states from Texas to New York and the Dakotas. Dallas, where temperatures have risen as high as 113°, has had 25 consecutive days of 100°-plus weather; Little Rock has had 17 such days. So serious has been the resulting human suffering that President Carter funneled $6.7 million in aid to the six hardest-hit states-Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas and Louisiana...
...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...
...Western Europe and Latin America, where indexation has been much more widely practiced than in the U.S., governments and the public are increasingly disenchanted with COLAs. Israel maintains the world's most comprehensive network of cost of living adjustments, and that nation has soared into triple-digit inflation (see box). Brazil, which has been heavily indexed since 1964, is now backing away from the system in the face of 100% inflation. Last January the governments of both Denmark and The Netherlands refused to grant workers and welfare recipients the expected automatic increases in salaries and benefits. Says...
...positive side, cost of living adjustments have enabled Israelis to withstand the onslaught of triple-digit inflation without succumbing to the moral decay, disillusion with democratic institutions and political polarization that are normally associated with a prolonged period of soaring prices. Israelis have continued to save at their commendably high rate (24% of net personal income last year, vs. less than 5% in the U.S.). Because of the continual upward adjustments, the retired and disabled on pensions have not been reduced to poverty. And, despite the business turmoil caused by galloping costs, the country's economy grew last year...
Indexation at home has led to a constant devaluation on the world money markets of Israeli currency, whose name was changed from the pound to the biblical shekel earlier this year. One digit was knocked off the currency so that ?10 became one shekel. During the past six months the shekel has fallen from 3.4 to 4.7 to the dollar. Because of its huge domestic and foreign borrowings, the country already must spend a crippling 30% of its G.N.P. on repayment of loans and interest. As its currency loses value, the burden of its foreign debts will become heavier...