Word: rationer
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Last week the Administration disclosed the details of its proposed emergency rationing plan. Each registered vehicle would be limited to a fixed number of gallons per week, and any driver who did not use his quota could sell his ration coupons on a "white market" for whatever the traffic would bear. Congress rejected a similar scheme last May, and adoption of almost any rationing plan is not expected before next autumn-unless Middle East...
...rattan mats in the warehouses and washing on the dock, for one or two weeks. "But there are people who have been here for six weeks," he tells us. "It's unavoidable." The refugees get a roof over their heads, two meals a day (one hot, one dry ration), medical assistance (if available) and one airmail letter (with postage) per family. As you walk through the camp, people approach you with scraps of paper and beg you to send telegrams to Washington or call their relatives in Los Angeles...
...moviegoing is a luxury for which many of Shanghai's unemployed youths have neither the time nor the money. They scramble for a precarious living by scalping movie tickets, acting as brokers for unused ration coupons, or earning commissions on the black-market sale of scarce local products. The more ambitious among them seek out Western consumer items to hawk illegally; popular items include movie-sound track albums, English-language books or clothing patterns laboriously traced from tattered copies of women's magazines. Says one youth who illegally returned to Shanghai from a commune in Yunnan: "The basic...
Before I'll pay what they want me to I'll just live without it, 'Cause I'll never doubt, You can't ration nothing I ain't done without...
Probably a more efficient measure would be to "ration by price," that is, to free the market and remove gasoline price controls. President Carter has the authority to do that, subject to congressional veto. Decontrol would cause a political storm because prices would immediately rise. Some experts warn that gasoline would soar to $2 a gal., but free market advocates argue that long-term prices would go up much less, by perhaps a few cents or a dime a gal. In any case, three facts are most significant. First, a free market unquestionably would reduce demand by raising the cost...