Word: set
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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During most of the 1960s, the U.S. enjoyed rapid economic growth combined with both low unemployment and low inflation. But in the 1970s the economy has been plagued by inadequate expansion, persistently high unemployment and galloping inflation; indeed last week the Labor Department set the rise in consumer prices for all of 1978 at a full 9%, making it the second most inflationary year in the past three decades.* Why the enormous difference between the fat Sixties and the souring Seventies? Though no single factor can be assigned all the blame, one trend is now being recognized as supremely important...
...there are some obvious avenues of attack. Government should loosen regulation, as President Carter has promised. One method would be to set pollution standards and impose stiff fines for violations, but leave it to industry to devise the least costly methods of cleaning up; this would be more sensible than specifying in great detail what equipment should be installed and how plants should be modified, as regulators often do now. Tax policies could be revised to spur investment. Economists quarrel about whether further cuts in taxes on capital gains and corporate profits, more generous investment tax credits or faster depreciation...
...ignite one of the hottest fights in Washington over the next year or two. Stealing a march on the Carter Administration, the Massachusetts Senator last week outlined a bill to repeal the antitrust exemption that for the past 30 years has enabled groups of truckers to get together and set freight rates. As new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kennedy has jurisdiction over antitrust matters, and perceiving deregulation to be a popular cause, he is eager to lead it. Illustrating his consummate political showmanship, he managed to get Nader, Kahn and officials of the N.A.M. and A.C.U. to join...
...operations as a consumer-minded staff member of the Senate Commerce Committee. He was named to the then eleven-member ICC (since reduced to six) by President Nixon in 1973, but it was not until Jimmy Carter made him chairman that he drew a bead on the set of regulations that had almost stamped out price competition in trucking...
...fashioned for railroads. Truck routes were spelled out in minute detail New lines were permitted to enter interstate trade only if they could prove they would provide a service that existing carriers could not. Thanks to an antitrust exemption granted by Congress in 1948 truckers have been allowed to set their own rates, and they have prospered greatly. Indeed, over the past eight years the eight largest truck lines have earned an average of more than 20% a year on shareholders' equity, a return higher than that enjoyed by the leading firms in such high-profit industries...