New York, Jan. 14—To remind us dramatically that economics is an inexact science, The Advocates, a weekly television program that goes out over the educational network, brought together a former president of the American Economic Association, and his successor, and they disagreed with each other roundly on the subject of whether wage and price controls are desirable. The confrontation was all the more interesting because the opponent of price controls was Professor Milton Friedman, who is widely acknowledged as the closest student of money policy in the world, and is, on top of that, the most colorful, and the shortest, economist in the world. Opposite him was President elect Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, the nation’s leading proponent of price controls, probably the best-known economic interventionist in the world, certainly the most stylish, and by ironic masterstroke, the tallest economist in the world.
Mr. Galbraith’s principal contentions are that we are suffering from twin evils, namely inflation and unemployment, and that it is obvious the Nixon Administration, oscillating between Keynesian and classical prescriptions, doesn’t know what to do about it. What to do about it is ask Galbraith what to do about it: in this case, wage and price controls. Everywhere? No, not everywhere, but in key industries, of the type that set standards for wages and prices.
Comments