Word: less
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...years, the great American promise was not a chicken in every pot but a big car in every garage. No more. With fuel prices edging into three digits, buyers have been thinking less about class and more about gas. As a result, car lots are clogged with 2 million unsold autos, many of them yesterday's glamorous giants, and dealers have become desperate...
...Some less charitable owners are leaving their cars in high-crime neighborhoods in hopes that the gas hogs will be stolen, so that they can collect insurance for them. In Boston, car thefts for the first three months of this year were up 44% over the same period last year. In New York City, police estimate that one-third of all auto thefts involve insurance fraud. At the same time, police believe that owners of fuel-efficient cars should take extra precautions against thieves. Said New York City Detective Philip Crepeau: "Like anybody else, the thieves go where the market...
...budget and monetary policies have promoted immediate consumption instead of investment for the future. Their fundamental warning: America has been living off, and eating into, its capital stock. Many of its factories and machines have become outmoded; its old industrial cities have become rundown; its work force has become less productive; real growth has swung low while demand has remained high. The nation is, in short, losing its economic edge in the world, and the hour is late?very late...
...government should determine the amount of investment and fix prices. Controls on goods from bread to books, from steel to cars, have been freed. State-owned companies, which control more than 25% of France's economy, have been instructed to operate as if they were private enterprises by relying less on subsidies and making a determined effort to turn a profit...
Despite the drop, the U.S. remains first in the international productivity league, but its lead is narrowing. Over the past ten years, nonfarm private productivity increased only 27%-the same as in Britain, but less than half as much as in France, West Germany and Italy and less than a quarter as much as in Japan. In 1950 it took seven Japanese or three German workers to match the industrial output of one American; today two Japanese and about 1.3 Germans do as well. Says Economist Arthur Laffer: "The U.S. is the fastest 'undeveloping' country in the world...