Word: optimum
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...previous peaks. More than 8 million Americans are out of work, a distressingly large number of them breadwinners, and the unemployment figure will remain uncomfortably high for two or three years. Production is running close to $250 billion below what it would be if factories were producing at optimum levels. Even with good growth, the economy will not climb back to its pre-recession peaks of late 1973 until late in 1976. At a tune when much of the world is crying out for the fruits of American production, the nation's machines and manpower remain grossly underused...
...users, including auto and appliance companies, piled up bigger inventories than they needed as a hedge against rising prices. Users also bought extra steel because they worried that a lack of coal caused by a miners' strike last year would bring a metal shortage. With production running at optimum capacity, efficiency at the mills increased and operating costs rose only slowly...
...stressing the need for a much more expansive program, Nathan points to the budget's projections for the so-called full-employment surplus. That is a significant figure designed to show what the budget would be if unemployment were only 4% and the economy were operating at optimum capacity...
...trimmed a week to ten days from the growing season in the middle latitudes that are the earth's breadbasket. Continued cooling could lead to agricultural disasters. The vaunted "miracle" wheat and rice of the Green Revolution were specifically created by plant geneticists to thrive under the optimum growing conditions of recent years. They are particularly vulnerable to vagaries of weather. A decline in moisture can significantly reduce their yields; they can also become susceptible to blights and pests. It was a bout of wet, chilly air during the growing season that apparently touched off the Middle Ages...
...this year's first quarter, private nonfarm productivity declined at an annual rate of 3.5% largely as a result of the severe first-quarter drop in real output of goods and services.* As is usual in times of an economic slowdown, both workers and machines operated below optimum efficiency because employers did not trim their work force as fast as they reduced production. The main cause of the productivity slump in the first quarter was that the gasoline crisis forced automakers to cut production of big, gas-drinking cars. Since auto manufacturing is one of the nation...