Word: okun
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...increase in the tax would be inflationary, because it would add directly to employers' costs: a company would have to send more of its own money to Washington for every worker on its payroll. An increase in the income tax does not have the same effect. Arthur Okun, a member of TIME'S Board of Economists, calls Ford's proposal "a perverse fiscal policy of the worst sort...
...Arthur Okun, also a member of TIME's Board and a senior fellow at Brookings, feels that the economy should be restrained somewhat, but not nearly as drastically as Ford recommends. Okun's prescription: either scrap the $394.2 billion ceiling, allow spending to rise to $407 billion or so and keep the proposed $10 billion tax cut; or drop the tax cut and let spending increase to around $417 billion...
...event, Okun opposes Ford's proposal to raise Social Security taxes on the grounds that it is "regressive," meaning that proportionately the increase would hit low-income earners more severely than the well paid. The liberals also fault the President for wanting to eliminate the "earned income credit" that allowed low-income families with children to deduct as much as $400 from their income taxes...
...well as in 1976, and that that would represent hardly any improvement over the 6.2% annual rate at which consumer prices rose in December (the increase during 1975, December to December, was 7%, down from 12.2% in 1974). "That is the most depressing feature," says Arthur Okun, a member of TIME's Board of Economists. "What are we buying with this moderation of recovery?" The liberals argue that the nation could afford faster growth with little if any more inflation...
Democrats on the Board of Economists-Heller, Okun, Pechman, Nathan-argue that inflation could be most effectively restrained by Government pressure on industry and labor to pursue moderate price-wage policies, leaving Washington free to stimulate the economy more through tax cuts, federal spending and faster money-supply growth. But they have no hope of changing President Ford's mind. They expect him to present a budget for fiscal 1977 of $395 billion, or $28 billion less than if no effort were made to hold down spending, and to resist further tax cuts not tied to such a spending...