Page S
THE
28, 1997.
THE WORLD GOES BY
platform, Press, and, for reached the limit of effectiveness, Slavian currency, nor the varia- But whenever that happens a coup all I know, pulpit, comes the when the relation between wages, tions of the Gulf Stream."
call to us to rejoice because prices employment and prices is such that
d'etat will abolish the Government overnight and a violent storm will
are rising. They want you to everybody will be able to buy And the student burst into tears destroy the crops. You cannot
monkey with Cosmic forces. wages enough of what they want without and became an astrologer. realise that because your
disadvantage to producer or con- buy less you are better off.
??
Sometimes this popular super- stition about consumers gets on an economist's nerves. Now and then
Many economists regard the con- sumer. They have been unsuc- The trouble is misguided people The papers make it perfectly cessful, the results varying from 24 keep talking about the "Consumer" sumer as a myth, originating from: clear. Higher prices to the pro- yens per pood to 65 feet above sea- Yet it is doubtful if there is such prehistoric times when the purpose
level.
'beast. No reputable economist of producing food was to eat it. ducer means that he can buy more
and not, as now, to sell it. allows for its existence, and the from other producers. Employment · increases and more people have Drama and tragedy have at all make it quite clear that the efforts to find the whole purpose of a sound economic wages of some sort. This means tended these prosperity, a word used in eco- right formula. Only last week, "a avstem is Production.
highly-respected student of eco- nomics to mean "more work.”
nomics et Hong Kong University Any Government will subsidise he will think he is seeing one, and rushed up to his colleagues waving the producer, but who ever heard he will say "Go away!" and pro-
paper and shouting of a Covernment subsidising the mise to knock off the drink.
consumer?
Nevertheless, it is a good thing. for Governments to hold the pro-
The wages
There is only one snag in this do not rise with the prices. Prices are inclined to be snobbish. They think wages are rather vulgar, so when wages rise they move up one, just as you do on the tram when you are gassed by a wave of garlic.
Therefore you must pay for your prosperity by having to buy less. You cannot expect to get a good] thing like prosperity for nothing,
BY "ULYSSES"
Surely a little spot of poverty is a small price to pay for prosperity?
The behaviour of prices has been the subject of much speculation. Hitherto it has been assumed that they do as they please, that nobody can control them.
During a slump business mer pray for prices to rise. Some of them gather in Ice House Street every morning and sing the well- known hymn, "There's a home for little prices above the bright blue sky, in the hope of enticing them upwards.
The experts keep asking, "Have prices touched bottom?" the idea being that when they do they will bounce up again.
And the sad thing is that when they do rise, after a time people want them down again. Shop- keepers complain of falling custom, workers protest against the cost of fiving. But all in vain.
Thus prices are never where you want them, but are always going to be. For this reason most econom ists are Hegelians in philosophy. They believe that nothing is; it only becomes. The universe is in a state of permanent fux, and the right price-level, like everything- else, never is, but is always becoming.
Economists have laboured for years to find a formula for reach- ing the point when a rise will have
Salary Rises For Matrimony
The first German law to encourage
the early marriage of civil servants has been given out.
Civil servanta
er monthly
first or second passed his
the rank
a piece of "Eureka.”
"But," said the others, when they Now and then some Governmen. mise of an adequate income before had worked out his formula, "you will announce its intention of in- the people. All who have had to. have not allowed for the Bustua- stituting a National Dividend, or do with beasts of burden will tions of the Beasarabian wheat some other means of adjusting pes- testify to the incentive-value of the market, the Inflation of Yugo ple's incomes to the cost of living, dangling carrot.
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