The Wilmington morning star., 1943-10-16
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER

NEW YORK.-The profession of economics
has produced in the last few years more
quacks than phrenology, astrology and psy-
chlatry combined, with hordes of bookkeepers
and common statisticians cribbing theories
ana fantasies from one another and stirring
patches OF factors and figures into stupefy-
ing muddles. Thus, for example, we have
learned against our better sense, that it is
possible to tap the till and swipe the current
receipts OF the social security fund, squander
tne money on election year, make work and
reHef projects in peacetime, keeping things
m balance by dropping in IOUs and meeting
demands on the vanished funds with future
current receipts Thus, also we learn that
the way to avoid initiation is to stack up in
1iauonary conditions as kids prepare an cleo
ton night bonfire pour on kerosene light
the match and then call the firemen
The source OF initiation is identified as the
dangerous money! the margin between the
living scale and the actual wage of the war
worker, whose income is paid out of taxes.
The provisions which created this discrepancy
ana the dangerous money were deliberate
~ adopted in time of peace and depression
as a means Of spreading relatively small
amount of private employment among the
largest possible number of people An en-
ployer was required to pay premium wages
TO workers for hours in excess of 40 per week.
10 avoid this extra cost he would arrange
to employ additional workers at normal rates.
When the war program began and the dan
ger OF initiation was foreseen, the Roosevelt
administration quickly moved to avert infla-
ton by controlling prices through m n S
which were, in part at least plainly confis-
catorY. Wages, of course, are the greatest
factor i'll all prices but it was thought better
10 pay imitation wages, and having SQuan-
dered money by the billion to try to get
some of it back by individual taxation
Every proposal to abolish time and-one-ha
ana double-tlme was deftly shrugged off and,
although there was work enough now to give
every available hand as much as he or she
could stand, this dangerous money was
deliberately set in motion, and, as it was
spread around prices began to spin out Of
control. Union leaders and bosses share the
guilt for setting this trap for the workers
under their command for it was essential
to their politics to delude them The taxation
plan has faltered as the workers. one guess
ahead OF the treasury, discovered that there
wasn't jail room enough in the entire re-
pupnc to accommodate delnquents by the
million who had always thought of the income
tax as sock-the-rich device. The next ex-
pertinent was the checkoff, or victory with
holding tax and now the treasury is proposing
to abolish that and thereby exempt altogether
from income tax billions of dollars of dan
gerous money
eminent is committed both economically and
politically to the extravagan wage scale. A
reduction at this late date would throw wages
and prices painfully out of fix in too many
areas and, moreover, would create dangerous
resentment among people who are drawing
out OF the war industries higher pay than
they ever got before and enjoying an illusion
of prosperity. The time for honesty and cour-
age was when the initiation began and the
best that can be done now is series of
patchy measures which may somehow stand
off the worst consequences.
In justice to the administrators economists
it may be said that they washed their hands
Of the mess and gave it to the politicians
early in the game No serious attempt ever
was made to explain how prices could be
kept in control if wages were touched only
by formula which soon began to dwindle
and by now has disappeared into the ar
chives. However, at the back OF the whole
mixup is the old radical theory that a people
can spend themselves rich and that the rich
will be always with US, even after they have
been taxed out of existence as a class.
Wages are the source of the Initiation, such
as it is to date, and will be the cause of
the disaster if it comes
-V--
There is place for everybody IN this war,
and 7 aim to be in the middle of it-War
plant messenger Henry NJ Roe, 95-year-old
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