◆ SpookStack

Re ee ee nk cect eer nly es Cerca pete en eR eee See ES BUR Sree ee eee Poy excessive unemploymenv and the impact of either rapid ia Kiation or deflation. In this connection the Employment Act of 196 with its Council of Economic Advisers to the President and its transmittal of Quarterly reports to the Congress can be of the utmost significance in preparing the way for an adequate but not a dangerous type of planning. Under conditions of vast military expenditure it is obvious that destruc- tive inflation can be avoided only by price, wage and profit controls so onerous as to be utterly objectionable to farmers, workers and business men. There must be either an excessive control of all economic factors or fantastically high taxation if deficit financing is to be avoided, Farmers, workers and business men are certain that excessive controls will prevent the rapid expansion in production which is so necessary for the war effort. The official spokesmen for these three groups no matter how plausible their arguments may be, are usually quite oblivious to the effect which their efforts have on the General Welfare. The Government's efforts to expand pro- duction without inflation inevitably create hard feelings in times like these when governmental expenditures so greatly exceed governmental income. The tightening up process has just begun because the great increase of outgo over income has just ‘ - Started. Fundamentally the fault is not with the farmers, workers or business men. Each group is doing a splendid job in a technical sense. Certainly no workers or farmers are as productive as ours. No factory management is as skillful. The guilty coms, —oreafharty. 16..a.world situation of universal mistrust which causesso” many of “the great" ~ nations of the world to devote the major part of their budgets to destructive pur~ | poses. Vast as our military expenditure is in the USA it is undoubtedly true that | our resources and productivity are such that we are carrying the load easier than | anyone else, If the burden is almost intolerable for us, think what it mst be for England and France, Think what it must be in the Iron curtain countries where the burden of excessive militarism reaches a magnitude which has the most inhuman reper~ cussions. We hear enough from those who have escaped from Russia to realize that the whole population from Czechoslovakia to China must be boiling with the most intense resentment because of impossibly high prices, government controls and iron clad restrictions of all private liberties. The hatred of Russia in Poland and China where the distrust of Russia has a long background must be especially great as the crushing burden of the vast iron curtain armament effort interferes with everything which human beings cherish. While there is fear among large segments of the popu- lation in western Europe that the American foreign policy will bring war, while there is growing hatred of us in Latin America, and while there is considerable distrust of us in the highly nationalistic Mohammedan nations and even in India, - the fact remains that the peoples in our orbit of influence are happier than those now being ground under the iron heel of Russian Imperialism. Unfortunately many millions of workers in our area enjoy a standard of living less than that which they had before World War II. In most Latin and Arab countries there is no enforceable income tax fairly applied and in many countries there is a tradition of graft which enables those in power to profit enormously at the expense of an exceedingly ignorant, hungry, disease ridden peasantry. Russia has her Achilles heel. She relies too much on the iron hand of the secret police, the terror of the informer and the concentration camp. We can never out-compete Russia in this kind of thing no matter how much we may cooperate with totalitarian and corrupt regimes, At the moment there is a race going on between the misery of peoples in two worlds living close to the iron curtain. Except in Czechoslovakia these peoples have never known the meaning of the words "democracy" and "freedom", What most of them are interested in is food to eat and land to work. They don't give a hang about Russian Communism or American Democracy. Above everything they fear war, loss of job or land, starvation and the concentration camp, All of these things are vivid to them. More and more as they see Russia and | the USA engaging in an armament race which increases their misery, they come to hate both the great powers, Out of this mounting misery and hate, out of this tendency for population to outrun the food supply can come the destruction of both Russian Communism and American Capitalism. There is only one way to save American Capitalism and that is to lead the free world in expanded trade and production of peace time goods. It was this program