Word: newsweek
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...EDITORS of Newsweek are mad as hell and they're not going to take it any more...
That, at least, seemed to describe the mood of the magazine's October 18 issue. Before that, Newsweek had taken an editorial position only three times in its history on an issue facing the nation on race, on Vietnam, and on energy. Presented against the backdrop of the Reagan Administration's announcement that the jobless rate in America had reached a post-depression record 10.1 percent, last week's proposed agenda for easing unemployment marked the fourth. The results, however, are disappointing. Rather than offering a complete program for getting America back to work. Newsweek gives a conglomeration of uncoordinated...
Like most observers, Newsweek begins its analysis of U.S. economic woes by focusing on interest rates and federal spending. Interest rates are "strangling recovery from the current recession," and the solution is to "close the gaping deficits projected for coming years." According to this view, government borrowing competes with the private sector for a limited amount of money, making credit more expensive for everyone. But this places far too much blame for high interest rates on budget deficits. The real problem is not the size of the government's share, but the limited size of the entire money supply. Instead...
...Newsweek's call for fiscal austerity proves particularly fruitless because of the tremendous spending inherent in other parts of the program, particularly the establishment of millions of public-works jobs through the recreation of the Works Progress Administration. Even though deficits in and of themselves pose no great hazard to economic well-being, a policy of fiscal inconsistency does. A government that runs up huge debts while preaching the virtues of budgetary prudence confuses the public and clouds the private sector's ability to make sound decisions. That may be the only clear lesson of the Reagan Administration's experiment...
...times, the magazine's agenda for getting America working again appears remarkably oblivious of important objections to its proposals--objections that emasculate the program's effectiveness. When suggesting a lowered minimum wage for workers under 20 years old, for example, Newsweek overlooks existing exceptions to the minimum wage law that permit many restaurants and fast found chains, typically major employers of youth, to pay "sub-minimum" wages for high school students. Instead of the prevailing $3.35 an hour, for many teenagers minimum wages brings $2.86 an hour. Any substantial reduction in the guaranteed wage would lead many teenagers to decide...