Word: wages
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...watched Tory policies lead to a confrontation with the unions that nearly paralyzed the country. In his election campaign of 1974 he promised to restore labor peace with a "social contract" providing for a sharp increase in pensions and food and housing subsidies in return for restraint on wage demands. He won the election but soon learned that restraint was out of the question. Social contract or no, the unions forced up wages. Faced with a 23.4% inflation rate, the highest in Europe, Wilson last year imposed a stringent ceiling on wage hikes; last month he tightened the screws further...
...coupled with ruinous inflation, currently running at a rate of 600% a year and caused largely by the feckless government economic policies. While the treasury presses out billions of pesos each week to finance rising deficits, the Peron regime has tried to soften the inflation's impact on wage earners by imposing artificial ceilings on service and commodity prices. These ceilings, in turn, have severely squeezed farmers and businessmen, with the result that goods and services are simply disappearing...
...other problems. Frank Morris, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, noted that many economists believe unemployment cannot be pushed below 4.5% without sharply boosting inflation.* But inflation was virtually unmentioned. Main reason: as the bill's more candid supporters admit, it would not be effective without wage and price controls-but they are anathema to labor unions. Significantly, Sar Levitan, director of the Center for Manpower Policy Studies at George Washington University, estimated at a previous hearing that to reach 3% unemployment in four years, national output of goods and services would have to grow...
...encouraging businessmen to invest in job-creating expansion. Said Economist Robert Eisner of Northwestern University: "If you want to create more jobs, cut the payroll tax"-i.e., the Social Security tax. Since an employer pays part of the tax as a fixed percentage of each worker's wage, a reduction would allow him to put a new worker on the payroll at a smaller total wage-and-tax cost than at present. Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, once again accepted the idea that the Government should be the employer of last resort-"but at an unattractive...
...rescue operations have reduced Italy's foreign-exchange reserves to less than $1 billion, while the nation has $15.5 billion outstanding in foreign loans, many of them coming due soon. The U.S. and the European Economic Community are insisting on tough anti-inflationary policies, including wage restraint, as a precondition for granting more credit. The Italian government fears that unpopular austerity is hardly the way to stave off Communist ambitions to participate in the government...