Word: okun
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...misery index that Jimmy Carter first referred to during the 1976 campaign, and that Ronald Reagan keeps citing in his attacks on the President, was concocted during the 1973-75 recession by the late economist Arthur Okun, who called it the discomfort index. He saw it as a puckish way to spotlight the nation's economic ills. The measure is simply the sum of the inflation and jobless rates. On Election Day of 1976 the index stood at 12.8%, with inflation at 5% and unemployment at 7.8%. The rate has climbed to 20% during Carter's White House...
...sharp business decline. Thus, instead of restraining wage or price demands when the economy slows, companies and unions continually push for more. Adam Smith maintained that each individual seeking his own profit would promote society's good, as if guided by an "invisible hand." But the late economist Arthur Okun argued that the comfortable relationship between Big Business and Big Labor has led to an "invisible handshake" that lifts both wages and prices...
DIED. Arthur Okun, 51, liberal economist and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Lyndon B. Johnson; of a heart attack; in Washington, D.C. Adviser to three Democratic Presidents and many corporate leaders, and a member of TIME'S Board of Economists, Okun was known for his handy formulations as well as his economic analyses. If the elusive recession ever comes, it will be identified by Okun's universally used definition: two consecutive quarters of negative G.N.P. growth. In the early 1960s he devised Okun's Law: for every 3% jump in economic growth, unemployment...
...renewed effort to cut federal spending is also gathering force. The 1981 budget submitted only five weeks ago is virtually a dead letter. Administration officials are now hoping to reduce the proposed $15.8 billion deficit to zero. Some top economists like Arthur Okun want an extra $15 billion or so in federal fat removed from the current budget, which ends in September...
...nest eggs or go into debt to support their living standards. Joseph Pechman of Washington's Brookings Institution, on the other hand, suggested that much of the shopping splurge has been attributable to a consumer compulsion to buy now before prices shoot into orbit. Yet Brookings Economist Arthur Okun noted that considerable spending has been for goods like furniture and clothing, which have been rising in price far more slowly than other consumer items...