Word: wage
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When Congress passed the Defense Production Act last month, Chief Stabilizer Eric Johnston solemnly prophesied that the cost of living would soar anywhere from 5% to 8% in the next year. Last week Johnston himself took a step toward making his gloomy warning come true: he approved a Wage Stabilization Board's decision that all wages may now be tied to the cost-of-living index...
Despite this, there were some hints of higher prices to come. General Motors decided to join the parade of other automakers asking for a boost on the basis of increased costs. With the new cost-of-living wage formula (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), higher costs and prices were in the wind. The Joint Committee on the Economic Report took a look in its crystal ball and predicted: "The pressures for higher prices [in the next two years] are not speculative but fundamental; [they] arise out of increases in basic costs and demand . . ." But last week, with many prices still softening...
...action by Congress on the $56 billion arms bill raises total defense estimates to $74 billion a year. Other items: an estimated $4.5 billion for another year of war in Korea, $5.7 billion for military construction, and $7.8 billion for the nation's allies. At an average wage of $1.75 an hour, $74 billion will buy 42 billion man-hours of work. Theoretically, the whole U.S. labor force of 62 million will have to work for 17 weeks to pay the $74 billion tax bill. The $74 billion tax bill is 3½ times what the U.S. spends...
...other familiar faces: René Mayer, for Economic Affairs; Georges Bidault, for National Defense. He neatly skipped across the stumbling blocks which defeated seven men before him: let the Assembly decide whether there should be State aid to Catholic schools, he pleaded, and let there be some kind of wage increases. France's four bickering center parties, so uncompromising before, agreed in hope of giving France a little stability. The Socialists refused to join his government, but promised to support it. And so, with Communists to the left of him and Gaullists to the right, Pleven put together...
...Giant G.M. and such independents as Hudson, Nash and Studebaker had not yet made up their minds. But there is still a tremendous buying power in the land that could quickly drive prices up: employment in July soared to an alltime record of 62,526,000. Last week the Wage Stabilization Board gave up its attempt to hold wage boosts to 10% above pre-Korea levels, adopted a new formula, under the new controls law, permitting them to rise with any new rise in the cost of living. The real inflation test will come in the fall, when rearmament begins...