Word: upcreeping
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Witness Slichter, 67, seemed almost affectionate toward price upcreep. "A slow rise in the price level is an inescapable cost of the maximum rate of growth," he said. The effects of slow inflation "are by no means as disastrous as they are frequently described." Like most other economists of the a-little-inflation-never-hurt-anybody school, he failed to make the distinction between the short-term direct effects of price upcreep and the much more serious longer-term psychological effects of accepting price upcreep as inevitable and tolerable (TIME, March...
Some advocates of forced-draft growth dismiss the Administration's worries about price upcreep, argue that "mild" inflation does no harm. Harvard's Professor Emeritus Alvin Hansen, grand old man of the a-little-inflation-never-hurt-anybody school, points out that prices edged upward at an average rate of 2⅓ a year over the past 60 years, while the U.S. was achieving history's most remarkable record of economic growth...
Against him, some U.S. economists argue that to equate past and present price upcreep is unsound, that creeping inflation is a graver menace than it used to be. Economist Burns points out that the past few decades have gradually brought two new inflationary factors into the U.S.'s economic structure: 1) Big Labor's power to force wages up even when demand is falling, and 2) Big Business' tendency to eliminate price competition, set profitable "administered prices," and restrict cornpetition to quality, styling, service, etc. The combined result, says Burns, is that instead of slipping downward when...
...momentous change. In the old days individual economic decisions had to take into account that price upcreep would be followed by a price shakeout. But today it is tempting to assume that there will be no more price shakeouts, that prices will go right on edging upward...
Because of the progressive damping of price downswings, the Federal Government's attitude toward price upcreep is much more important than before. Argues Economics Professor Neil Jacoby of the University of California at Los Angeles...