The Week

duelling pundits. From the Wall Street Journal, September 30: “economic gloom cuts labor union demands for big 1982 contracts. The fight against inflation may get a boost from the labor front: signs point to a substantial moderation in wage settlements next year.” From the Washington Post, October 2: “PICTURE EMERGING OF BIG ’82 WAGE INCREASES. Although actual contract bargaining does not begin for several months, the size of the wage pattern for next year’s new round of labor negotiations is beginning to come into focus—and the news is not good for the Reagan Administration’s short-term hopes of bringing down inflation.”

By and large, it remains easier for the Federal Government to shut down a power plant or freeze a taxpayer’s bank account than to lay off one of its own employees. Forbes magazine and some members of Congress recently computed the actual number of federal workers that have been let go since last fall. As of September 4, more than half a year into the Reagan Revolution, that total amounted to 704—less than one in two thousand. (There are a million and a half federal workers, not counting defense.) Many cuts did not take effect until the new fiscal year began October 1. Even so, by October 24 the number let go had reached only 15,002, less than one in a hundred. The average federal employee thus is now more likely to be fired than to be run over by a beer truck, but less likely to be fired than to fall victim to a violent crime. Over in the real economy, by the way, one in every ten workers loses his job every year.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

duelling pundits. From the Wall Street Journal, September 30: “economic gloom cuts labor union demands for big 1982 contracts. The fight against inflation may get a boost from the labor front: signs point to a substantial moderation in wage settlements next year.” From the Washington Post, October 2: “PICTURE EMERGING OF BIG ’82 WAGE INCREASES. Although actual contract bargaining does not begin for several months, the size of the wage pattern for next year’s new round of labor negotiations is beginning to come into focus—and the news is not good for the Reagan Administration’s short-term hopes of bringing down inflation.”

By and large, it remains easier for the Federal Government to shut down a power plant or freeze a taxpayer’s bank account than to lay off one of its own employees. Forbes magazine and some members of Congress recently computed the actual number of federal workers that have been let go since last fall. As of September 4, more than half a year into the Reagan Revolution, that total amounted to 704—less than one in two thousand. (There are a million and a half federal workers, not counting defense.) Many cuts did not take effect until the new fiscal year began October 1. Even so, by October 24 the number let go had reached only 15,002, less than one in a hundred. The average federal employee thus is now more likely to be fired than to be run over by a beer truck, but less likely to be fired than to fall victim to a violent crime. Over in the real economy, by the way, one in every ten workers loses his job every year.