Tape 193 - State of the Union
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| - | Welcome, once again, | 0:02 |
| as MIT Professor, Paul Samuelson, | 0:03 | |
| discusses the current economic scene. | 0:05 | |
| This series is produced by | 0:07 | |
| Instructional Dynamics Incorporated. | 0:08 | |
| President Ford has now proposed | 0:12 | |
| his State of the Union Address and his budget. | 0:14 | |
| What is your evaluation on it? | 0:17 | |
| - | There are no particular surprises | 0:23 |
| in any of the official State messages | 0:25 | |
| which have come our way nor have there been any surprises | 0:28 | |
| in the reactions to them. | 0:33 | |
| So, let me concentrate on | 0:35 | |
| what are the essential parts | 0:40 | |
| of President Ford's proposal | 0:44 | |
| and let me do this | 0:47 | |
| against the background of | 0:49 | |
| Ronald Reagan, | 0:52 | |
| his rival for nomination | 0:53 | |
| by the Republican Party, | 0:57 | |
| what his particular fiscal views are. | 0:59 | |
| I think the key note of the budget, | 1:04 | |
| which we have received recently, | 1:07 | |
| and the State of the Union message, | 1:10 | |
| which came a little bit earlier, | 1:12 | |
| is that President Ford is still | 1:14 | |
| pressing the line | 1:18 | |
| that the public sector is | 1:20 | |
| too large in the U.S economy, | 1:24 | |
| that the only way to get the public sector down | 1:28 | |
| is to reduce simultaneously the level of public expenditure | 1:32 | |
| and the | 1:37 | |
| level of taxation. | 1:39 | |
| Now, this reflects a value judgment | 1:42 | |
| which will be congenial | 1:46 | |
| to many people in the United States. | 1:49 | |
| It will be particularly congenial to many people | 1:52 | |
| in the United States who have, historically, | 1:55 | |
| voted Republican and it will be congenial | 2:00 | |
| to many Democrats who, | 2:03 | |
| intermittently, | 2:06 | |
| pass over and vote the Republican ticket. | 2:08 | |
| By and large, if you divide the U.S. population | 2:14 | |
| into two halves, | 2:18 | |
| at the median income level | 2:21 | |
| measured by family and individual income, | 2:24 | |
| which I suppose these days | 2:28 | |
| is somewhere around 13, 14,000 dollars, | 2:30 | |
| the purely economic interests | 2:35 | |
| of the upper half | 2:39 | |
| of the income group | 2:42 | |
| could be favorably served | 2:45 | |
| by pushing in the direction of the President's proposal. | 2:48 | |
| I say could be for reasons which I'll develop in a moment. | 2:55 | |
| By and large, the long-run economic interests | 3:01 | |
| of the lower half | 3:06 | |
| by income of the population would, | 3:09 | |
| in some degree, be hurt by the | 3:13 | |
| President's proposals | 3:18 | |
| and pushing in the direction of the philosophy | 3:20 | |
| of the President's proposals. | 3:22 | |
| I say by and large because there certainly | 3:24 | |
| are some retrenchments in government expenditure | 3:27 | |
| and some alterations in the way the public sector | 3:32 | |
| manages its business, | 3:36 | |
| which would | 3:38 | |
| save taxes, | 3:41 | |
| more importantly would save national resources, | 3:44 | |
| and yet which would, only to a limited degree, | 3:49 | |
| be harmful to anybody. | 3:53 | |
| If some ... | 3:57 | |
| super demon has the ability | 4:01 | |
| to increase efficiency | 4:05 | |
| of government operations | 4:08 | |
| without affecting the scope | 4:10 | |
| of those activities, | 4:14 | |
| we could help everybody | 4:16 | |
| by having more available | 4:19 | |
| to give to the poor and having more left | 4:22 | |
| by the more affluent to enjoy | 4:26 | |
| as they conceive the good life. | 4:28 | |
| But by and large, | 4:33 | |
| there are no | 4:35 | |
| proposals of administration | 4:38 | |
| or of efficiency | 4:40 | |
| which are important | 4:43 | |
| in changing the efficiency | 4:47 | |
| of the way we run | 4:50 | |
| the public sector in the United States. | 4:51 | |
| So, what we have here is a pretty clear-cut | 4:53 | |
| value judgment choice | 4:56 | |
| between a smaller public sector | 5:00 | |
| with the gains that that implies | 5:04 | |
| to a part of the population | 5:07 | |
| and the harms | 5:10 | |
| that that implies | 5:12 | |
| to still another part of the population. | 5:14 | |
| It's always difficult to know what the response is | 5:19 | |
| to what is not | 5:24 | |
| a novel proposal, | 5:25 | |
| it's what the President has been pushing as a line for ... | 5:27 | |
| all the time he's been in office, | 5:35 | |
| but in particular for the last eight months or so. | 5:36 | |
| I don't judge that the general reaction | 5:42 | |
| to his proposal | 5:46 | |
| has been terribly enthusiastic | 5:47 | |
| nor, as far as I can now judge, | 5:49 | |
| has it been terribly adverse. | 5:53 | |
| It's not like | 5:56 | |
| the reaction which has greeted | 5:59 | |
| the Reagan proposal | 6:03 | |
| to take 90 billion dollars of federal expenditure | 6:05 | |
| and cut it out, | 6:11 | |
| reallocate ... | 6:13 | |
| by some unspecified means | 6:15 | |
| the tax resources of the Federal Government | 6:19 | |
| to the states and let the states pick up that fraction, | 6:22 | |
| perhaps small fraction, of the 90 billion dollars, | 6:27 | |
| which, in the infinite wisdom | 6:30 | |
| of the grass-roots at the state and local level, | 6:33 | |
| the populace decides is really | 6:35 | |
| worth the sacrifice | 6:39 | |
| of their private-life consumption. | 6:41 | |
| That proposal of Ronald Reagan, | 6:45 | |
| written, one is told, by his brain trust | 6:50 | |
| and the speech writers | 6:55 | |
| and, as in the | 6:57 | |
| case of McGovern in the 1972 election, | 6:59 | |
| perhaps not completely explained to the candidate, | 7:04 | |
| has shown some signs of getting Ronald Reagan | 7:09 | |
| in trouble, politically. | 7:12 | |
| Of course, when you get in trouble, politically, | 7:15 | |
| with a part of the population, that puts you in very solidly | 7:18 | |
| with another part of the population. | 7:23 | |
| And part of the appeal of Ronald Reagan, | 7:26 | |
| something which I suppose is feared by | 7:29 | |
| the White House confidants of President Ford, | 7:31 | |
| is that there will be a resonate response | 7:36 | |
| within the country to this proposal of Ronald Regan. | 7:38 | |
| However, New Hampshire is not the best environment | 7:43 | |
| to try out a balloon of this sort | 7:48 | |
| because... | 7:51 | |
| New Hampshire has the, | 7:54 | |
| shall I say, distinction of being a state without | 7:56 | |
| an income tax ... | 8:01 | |
| well, without a full-fledged income tax, | 8:03 | |
| and also without even a broad-based | 8:05 | |
| sales tax. | 8:09 | |
| So it looked to the | 8:10 | |
| New Hampshire grass-roots people, | 8:13 | |
| who are against state taxation, | 8:16 | |
| that they were being the pass baby | 8:18 | |
| and they had no | 8:22 | |
| stomach to ... | 8:25 | |
| give baby even that minimal amount of attention and care, | 8:27 | |
| which even New Hampshire thinks baby will require. | 8:33 | |
| I don't know that that's a particularly logical reaction | 8:39 | |
| because it certainly could be the case that New Hampshire, | 8:43 | |
| under a Reagan proposal would, | 8:48 | |
| one way or another, gain enough | 8:51 | |
| in released taxation, | 8:55 | |
| that doesn't go from New Hampshire to Washington | 8:58 | |
| to be able to afford this, but it would have to be done | 9:01 | |
| at the grass-roots level | 9:06 | |
| and through something called | 9:08 | |
| New Hampshire taxation. | 9:11 | |
| And the New Hampshire people are against taxation. | 9:13 | |
| So, this required a great deal of explaining | 9:19 | |
| by the President ... | 9:21 | |
| I'm sorry, by the candidate, | 9:26 | |
| Ronald Reagan, in New Hampshire. | 9:28 | |
| Let me defer any discussion | 9:32 | |
| of that matter | 9:35 | |
| and just tick off some of the proposals made in the budget | 9:37 | |
| and in the State of the Union message. | 9:42 | |
| The most important proposal is the size of the budget | 9:49 | |
| and the ... | 9:53 | |
| plea to Congress, | 9:55 | |
| the attempt to go over Congress's head | 9:57 | |
| to the electorate to put pressure upon Congress | 10:02 | |
| to cut down on the rate of growth of federal expenditure. | 10:06 | |
| And as a bait and sweetener | 10:12 | |
| for | 10:14 | |
| that continence | 10:16 | |
| the President is proposing, not only a continuation | 10:18 | |
| of the emergency tax reductions that took place | 10:22 | |
| in the recession year of 1975, | 10:26 | |
| but also some decrease | 10:31 | |
| for the lower- and middle-income classes | 10:34 | |
| going into 1977. | 10:39 | |
| The President regretfully, you'll recall, | 10:47 | |
| vetoed the continuation of the recession tax reduction, | 10:51 | |
| but then, just as Congress was about to go home | 10:56 | |
| for the Christmas holiday, the President, | 11:00 | |
| who wants a tax reduction | 11:04 | |
| even without the expenditure reduction, | 11:06 | |
| in order to keep up the momentum of the ... | 11:08 | |
| of the recovery, | 11:12 | |
| agreed for a nominal promise by Congress | 11:14 | |
| that it would | 11:17 | |
| think hard on the problem | 11:19 | |
| of controlling the rate of growth of federal expenditures. | 11:21 | |
| He designed the tax bill. | 11:24 | |
| Well, I don't see any particular sign | 11:26 | |
| that there's a new ball game here. | 11:29 | |
| We still will have the House Ways Means Committee | 11:31 | |
| having to decide what tax changes it will make | 11:33 | |
| and which of the President's particular recommendations, | 11:37 | |
| which I'm about to discuss, it will go for. | 11:41 | |
| And you will also have the new | 11:44 | |
| budgetary committees | 11:47 | |
| in the Congress having to decide | 11:50 | |
| what will be the total of the expenditure ... | 11:53 | |
| what limits we put upon that | 12:00 | |
| and what the tax resources will be for that. | 12:02 | |
| I think we do have some changes in structure | 12:06 | |
| in the Congress, but since I've never thought | 12:08 | |
| that the basic problem in the Congress was its structure, | 12:11 | |
| I would counsel that you not be too sanguine | 12:17 | |
| that a change in ... | 12:20 | |
| in structure can change the | 12:23 | |
| actual mode of behavior of the Congress. | 12:27 | |
| The Congress reacts to the electorate | 12:30 | |
| in its own characteristic way. | 12:34 | |
| Well, let's just go over some of the particular proposals. | 12:37 | |
| There's a proposal that there'd be accelerated depreciation | 12:43 | |
| for corporate construction of plants | 12:48 | |
| and purchase of new equipments in areas that average | 12:50 | |
| 7% or higher unemployment last year. | 12:52 | |
| And this is a short-run thing | 12:55 | |
| that's supposed to be done in the next year. | 12:57 | |
| There's something, of course, to be said for such proposals, | 13:02 | |
| but if you aren't | 13:05 | |
| ready to go with the plans | 13:09 | |
| for capital formation in such areas already, | 13:12 | |
| having one year to do it is a pretty crowded time | 13:15 | |
| unless the thing were likely to be extended. | 13:21 | |
| I don't know how much quantitatively one could get, | 13:23 | |
| for better or worse, from such a program, | 13:26 | |
| but it sounds good in a overall package. | 13:29 | |
| It sounds as if, although it's something for a business, | 13:32 | |
| it is really in the interests | 13:34 | |
| of the unemployed. | 13:37 | |
| There's not so much in this President's ... | 13:39 | |
| budget and State of the Union message | 13:44 | |
| for the lower income groups | 13:46 | |
| and the unemployed that we can afford to disregard | 13:48 | |
| any item, even rhetorical, in the proposal | 13:52 | |
| that seems to work for their benefit. | 13:57 | |
| Well then there's the reduction in individual | 14:00 | |
| and corporate taxes. | 14:04 | |
| Corporate taxation go down to 46%, | 14:05 | |
| most of it at the individual, personal level, | 14:10 | |
| the family level, and not at the business level. | 14:12 | |
| There is a new proposal, I suppose somebody thought that up | 14:16 | |
| at the last moment and put in at the last moment, | 14:21 | |
| I don't know what it's gonna get anywhere, | 14:24 | |
| that there be some incentive to encourage low income | 14:25 | |
| and middle income wage earners to buy common stocks. | 14:30 | |
| We've already had a significant increase | 14:36 | |
| in the Keogh plan for the self-employed, | 14:38 | |
| with respect to pensions. | 14:41 | |
| The argument there is that since corporate executives | 14:43 | |
| are given loopholes inconsistent with fair taxation | 14:47 | |
| of every dollar of income as any other dollar of income, | 14:52 | |
| then you ought to also have a loophole | 14:56 | |
| for the self-employed. | 14:59 | |
| And I know that for a person like myself, | 15:02 | |
| this has been a significant gift. | 15:07 | |
| I don't feel that I particularly need a gift of this sort, | 15:10 | |
| but it has been given to me | 15:14 | |
| by recent administrations and Congress. | 15:17 | |
| In addition, I've had a supplementary tax shelter provided | 15:22 | |
| to university professors on a very generous scale | 15:28 | |
| for the last couple of calendar years, | 15:32 | |
| and now we're going to get another. | 15:36 | |
| It's a much greater boon to the upper income groups | 15:39 | |
| than you would think at first blush, | 15:44 | |
| because what's $1,500 | 15:47 | |
| to a high income corporate executive? | 15:51 | |
| But this is the sort of thing which, | 15:54 | |
| if he has any wisdom at all in the giving away | 15:58 | |
| of his money and putting it in trusts, | 16:00 | |
| operates unto the grandchildren, | 16:03 | |
| the cousins, | 16:07 | |
| and so forth, and it really amounts to | 16:10 | |
| a considerable | 16:14 | |
| tax subsidy. | 16:16 | |
| It's another backdoor tax expenditure | 16:18 | |
| at a time when we're trying to tighten up desperately | 16:20 | |
| on food stamps and on school lunches | 16:25 | |
| lest some lower, middle income child | 16:29 | |
| get a free school lunch, which he's not entitled to | 16:34 | |
| and which, perhaps, will undermine the incentive | 16:37 | |
| of his father and mother to go out to work. | 16:41 | |
| At that same time that we're trying to tighten that up, | 16:44 | |
| we're loosening up and giving some | 16:49 | |
| small little tidbits | 16:53 | |
| to what you might call the middle middle income classes | 16:55 | |
| and the upper middle income classes. | 17:00 | |
| All you have to do is keep this stuff in common stocks | 17:04 | |
| for seven years and | 17:07 | |
| you're, if not home free, | 17:10 | |
| you've gotten rid of a good deal of your tax liability. | 17:12 | |
| There's been proposed a three-tenths of a percent increase | 17:18 | |
| in both employer and employee Social Security taxes, | 17:22 | |
| effective next January 1st. | 17:25 | |
| Since the ... | 17:29 | |
| Social Security program | 17:31 | |
| has never been fully funded, it has always been obvious | 17:35 | |
| that there will be increasing tax rates required, | 17:40 | |
| over time, | 17:45 | |
| and this recognizes | 17:46 | |
| that fact. | 17:49 | |
| The President, as far as I know, | 17:50 | |
| has dropped his view | 17:52 | |
| that Social Security payments should be | 17:55 | |
| indexed only up to 5% increase in the cost of living. | 17:59 | |
| That's a very strange view | 18:04 | |
| at a time when | 18:07 | |
| the liability of every family ... | 18:10 | |
| elderly, needy family ... | 18:13 | |
| was that the cost of living would rise by more than 5%, | 18:15 | |
| the President wanted to take it away. | 18:17 | |
| Now that, as he says in his messages, | 18:19 | |
| we've made some progress on the rate of inflation, | 18:23 | |
| so it's unlikely to go above 5%, | 18:25 | |
| I guess the President feels there's no reason | 18:28 | |
| to espouse a politically unpopular proposal. | 18:30 | |
| He might as well go along with it | 18:35 | |
| since he doesn't think it's gonna cost him very much. | 18:36 | |
| There is talk of consolidating various | 18:42 | |
| federal health programs into a block grant | 18:48 | |
| to the states | 18:52 | |
| and ... | 18:54 | |
| what, I suppose, | 18:57 | |
| captured the notice of the person | 18:59 | |
| in the street more was that | 19:02 | |
| even elderly people | 19:05 | |
| will have to pay | 19:07 | |
| up to $500 for | 19:10 | |
| unusually high medical expenses. | 19:14 | |
| But, since a large part of the population | 19:18 | |
| would be in real distress | 19:23 | |
| if they had catastrophic illnesses, | 19:25 | |
| the President, in his program, | 19:28 | |
| has agreed to provide insurance for | 19:31 | |
| catastrophic illnesses. | 19:36 | |
| Let me say that | 19:38 | |
| I don't see any | 19:41 | |
| reason why a liberal | 19:44 | |
| should be | 19:47 | |
| unduly concerned | 19:49 | |
| about some payments | 19:50 | |
| in the health area by | 19:54 | |
| the rather | 19:57 | |
| poor part of the population. | 20:00 | |
| You know, in England it's been a matter | 20:02 | |
| of almost ideological controversy as to whether, | 20:04 | |
| for spectacles or for false teeth, | 20:09 | |
| the British citizenry should be | 20:12 | |
| charged any fee at all | 20:16 | |
| by the British Health Service. | 20:18 | |
| And the people on the left and labor party | 20:21 | |
| were very much against any fee whatsoever, | 20:25 | |
| even 25 cents | 20:28 | |
| for a prescription. | 20:31 | |
| However, this is just really part of the same philosophy | 20:34 | |
| that goes into deductible insurance, | 20:39 | |
| private automobile insurance ... | 20:43 | |
| $100 deductible or $200 deductible. | 20:45 | |
| This holds down | 20:48 | |
| the unnecessitatis claims | 20:51 | |
| in the automobile casualty area. | 20:54 | |
| It ... | 20:58 | |
| applies something against the administrative costs | 21:00 | |
| and since, under an absolutely free health service, | 21:05 | |
| you get a great amount of nuisance medical consultation ... | 21:08 | |
| hypochondriacs who, | 21:14 | |
| at the expense of | 21:19 | |
| other people's access to the doctors, | 21:20 | |
| utilize a lot of his time, | 21:24 | |
| if you can cut that down by very small fees, | 21:26 | |
| even token fees, then, in principal, | 21:29 | |
| it's a good thing. | 21:35 | |
| I think there always should be, | 21:38 | |
| somewhere, an escape valve | 21:40 | |
| so that a person who needs healthcare | 21:42 | |
| and can't pony up even $200 | 21:46 | |
| should have some way, | 21:50 | |
| in the end, of getting that healthcare. | 21:52 | |
| But I must say that the uproar over this, | 21:55 | |
| in many circles, is not something which | 22:00 | |
| I think | 22:04 | |
| should be | 22:06 | |
| approved of. | 22:08 | |
| Well, there's a little ... | 22:11 | |
| Touch, shall I say, | 22:14 | |
| a little gift again, | 22:16 | |
| to the | 22:19 | |
| upper middle classes, | 22:22 | |
| particularly if they're farmers or small business men, | 22:24 | |
| on helping them pay their estates taxes. | 22:27 | |
| If a farmer ... | 22:31 | |
| Let's think of a poor, Iowa farmer, if you can imagine such. | 22:33 | |
| The family farm has $500,000 worth | 22:38 | |
| of equipment | 22:43 | |
| and buildings and land, | 22:45 | |
| and in the fullness of years | 22:49 | |
| the head of the family dies | 22:53 | |
| and he wants to pass this farm on to his children ... | 22:56 | |
| well, the government bailiff is right there at the wake | 22:59 | |
| because on an estate of $500,000 | 23:05 | |
| you have a considerable tax obligation, | 23:10 | |
| even after you allow, under the marital deduction, | 23:12 | |
| 120,000 to your wife and even though you've given away | 23:17 | |
| over the years as those poor, ignorant, Iowa farmers | 23:20 | |
| are prone these days to do, | 23:24 | |
| in the form of trusts and shares in the farm ... | 23:26 | |
| some part of it, you still have this obligation. | 23:31 | |
| Now, if you were in distress and had to sell this farm | 23:33 | |
| on very short notice for whatever it will fetch, | 23:36 | |
| then you might well get less than its fair market value | 23:42 | |
| in a distress sale and you'd have to pay your taxes. | 23:46 | |
| And that's a bad thing, and might even have to be sold | 23:50 | |
| to outsiders rather than stay in the family. | 23:54 | |
| Well, under the present law, | 23:58 | |
| there really is a pretty generous provision. | 24:01 | |
| You can pay this over 10 years. | 24:04 | |
| The interest rate used to be 9% | 24:07 | |
| but it's about to be lowered to 7%. | 24:10 | |
| 9% sounds high, but during much of the time | 24:14 | |
| that you had to pay 9% on this sort of thing, | 24:18 | |
| if you went to the bank to borrow you paid 18%, | 24:21 | |
| and on overnight money you could get more than 9%. | 24:25 | |
| And the cost of living was rising | 24:27 | |
| by more than 9%. | 24:29 | |
| So we really can't think of 9% as a high punitive rate, | 24:30 | |
| and certainly 7% even in this week that I'm talking, | 24:36 | |
| when treasury bill yields are a good deal less than that, | 24:42 | |
| is not a high rate. | 24:46 | |
| But the president wants to give you | 24:49 | |
| five years of postponement. | 24:52 | |
| Well, five years of postponement | 24:54 | |
| of a $500,000 obligation | 24:58 | |
| is itself, since time is money ... | 25:00 | |
| interest is always earn-able on money ... | 25:04 | |
| is itself an outright gift, really, | 25:08 | |
| to an income class that, | 25:11 | |
| in terms of human need or equity, | 25:14 | |
| as most | 25:17 | |
| people define those terms, | 25:20 | |
| does not have a very strong case for that. | 25:23 | |
| But the President needs some sweeteners | 25:25 | |
| in Iowa. | 25:29 | |
| And it's possible that he gained | 25:30 | |
| some political mileage in that regard. | 25:34 | |
| Some of us, who aren't farmers, by the way, | 25:38 | |
| are going to be beneficiaries and get a free ride | 25:40 | |
| along with this, or our heirs are, | 25:45 | |
| if it should come to be | 25:49 | |
| passed. | 25:53 | |
| Well, that's the | 25:55 | |
| long and short, I guess, | 25:59 | |
| of the President's proposal. | 26:01 | |
| It's not a program which | 26:08 | |
| shows concern to | 26:11 | |
| step up | 26:14 | |
| the rate of the recovery or, what I think is more important, | 26:16 | |
| which involves any continuancy planning | 26:20 | |
| on doing exactly that if | 26:24 | |
| the recovery, | 26:28 | |
| as it proceeds throughout the four quarters of this year, | 26:30 | |
| turns out to be a little weaker, | 26:35 | |
| or for that matter a little bit stronger, | 26:37 | |
| than the consensus forecasters think. | 26:40 | |
| What we have here is something which I think | 26:46 | |
| probably ought to be a matter of political debate: | 26:50 | |
| fundamental value judgements | 26:54 | |
| on the part of the electorate, | 26:56 | |
| with all sides presented forcefully | 26:59 | |
| to the electorate for its mature consideration, | 27:03 | |
| and for reflectioning upon | 27:09 | |
| what are the essential | 27:13 | |
| programs at the federal and at the local and state levels | 27:18 | |
| which a majority of the electorate, | 27:23 | |
| or a preponderance of majority ... | 27:27 | |
| whatever you think is required for legitimacy | 27:30 | |
| in collective decision making ... | 27:33 | |
| What is it that the people want? | 27:36 | |
| Now, I think you'll find, and past elections have shown it, | 27:39 | |
| and I suspect that future campaigns | 27:44 | |
| and elections will also show it, | 27:47 | |
| that the public mind is divided. | 27:48 | |
| On the one hand, the public is struck by | 27:51 | |
| the fiscal problems of New York City. | 27:57 | |
| The public thinks "there but for the grace of God go we," | 28:00 | |
| in Memphis, Nashville | 28:04 | |
| and Boston ... | 28:08 | |
| I don't mean to pick out any particular cities ... | 28:09 | |
| The public time and again, and with increasing frequency, | 28:13 | |
| has voted down bond issues | 28:17 | |
| showing a certain amount of tax consciousness. | 28:20 | |
| And no wonder, since for the last two or three years | 28:24 | |
| the general American ... | 28:28 | |
| society has not been experiencing | 28:32 | |
| the trend rate of real growth of income | 28:34 | |
| that has been characteristic. | 28:38 | |
| On the other hand, the governmental programs | 28:41 | |
| got there, generally, through a political process. | 28:46 | |
| People, many at least, | 28:51 | |
| are genuinely distressed | 28:53 | |
| if they learn, either the easy way or the hard way, | 28:57 | |
| that there are starving people in their vicinity | 29:00 | |
| and the minimum | 29:05 | |
| welfare programs | 29:08 | |
| can be regarded | 29:10 | |
| as a vast system of social mutual reinsurance, | 29:11 | |
| which we've all voted upon ourselves. | 29:16 | |
| And I expect therefore, that | 29:18 | |
| a ... | 29:22 | |
| clever interrogator | 29:24 | |
| can get from the public the answer | 29:26 | |
| that they want the public sector down. | 29:28 | |
| All he has to do is concentrate upon the tax bill. | 29:31 | |
| And he could also, at the same time, | 29:33 | |
| get an inconsistent response that the public sector | 29:35 | |
| is about right and ought to grow | 29:39 | |
| in accordance with the growing needs | 29:41 | |
| of the American people collectively considered. | 29:43 | |
| - | If you have any comments or questions | 29:48 |
| for Professor Samuelson, address them to | 29:50 | |
| Instructional Dynamics Incorporated | 29:53 | |
| 450 East Ohio Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. | 29:55 |
Item Info
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