FRIDAY. NOVEMBER 22, 1963
A 3
Your Money's
By SYLVIA PORTER
CMrit, Hill Syndicate, Inc.
MEOFORD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFORD, OREGON
mm
t . , JM"JjAR REMARKABLY STABLE '
m m. V Ias' 92 J63", toe cost of living of American
families has risen and the buying power of the U.S.' dollar they
have earned and saved has dwindled.
JHJDiy JIl in close t0 a century have living costs de
clined and the dollar gained buying power - and these were
primaruy periods of national crisis in the post-Civil War era,
iofnP W War 1 era a1d 1116 8reat depression of the early
ismus. the number of Americans suffering deep hardship dur
ing those years dwarfed the number benefiting from the trends.
In a scant 17 of the years going all the way back to 1871
have living costs and the dollar's purchasing power been suf
ficiently stable to justify the claim that these basic barometers
of the U.S. family's weUlbeing held their own.
. Each generation born in these 92 years has had less than one
chance out of 10 that the nestegg of dollars it worked so hard
to accumulate would maintain its value. The odds have been
81 per cent that the dollar's value would shrink in all the 30
year periods since 1871.
Throughout the thousands of years of recorded time,
the fundamental trend of living costs has been up and the
basic direction of paper money values has been down. In
' fact, the historian Arnold J. Toynbee reports he has never
found an instance in which the value of the currency of any
country in any era of history has risen over a prolonged pe-
' riod.
It is against this background that you must weigh the com
parative stability" in living costs and in the U.S. dollar's buying
power in the past several years.
This stability is remarkable in terms of our oWnTecord. It
is spectacular in terms of the records of underdeveloped na
tions and of other industrialized nation which like us have gone
through two world wars in one generation.
Inflation was rampant in the U.S. following World War II
and the Korean conflict. This is why today's cost of living is up
a shattering 221 per cent since 1939 and 131 per cent since 1947
49. This is why the dollar which was worth 100 cents in the
marketplace in 1939 is worth only 45 cents now and the dollar
which would buy 100 cents of goods and services in 1947-49 will
buy only 76 cents' worth of the same goods and services in
: 1963.
But we emerged from those inflation eras long ago. Not for
years have prices and the dollar been battered by the pres
sures of severe scarcities of materials, machines and man
power, of huge pent-up demands for goods and services, of vast
pools of savings accumulated only because there was little on
which the savings could be spent during the wartime '40s, of
an upward spiral of wages.
Let's get this point straight: there can be no absolute sta
bility in prices or in a currency's purchasing power in a dynamic
society and ours is a dynamic society. A movement up or
down of a per cent or so over a 12-month period must be con
sidered approximate stability. Now here's our recent record: ,
In the past 12 months, the government's consumer price
index our measure of living cost changes has climbed
' less than 1 per cent. The index is at an all-time high, but
' it has moved only from 106.1 to 107.1 in whole year. To
' put this in perspective, today it costs a bit over $1.07 to buy
.the marketbasket that $1 would have .bought in 1957-99,
' roughly five years ago.
' In the past 12 months, the dollar's buying power has slipped
1 per cent. Its value in the marketplace is at a new low, but
the erosion is now at a creeping pace. Again to put this is
perspective, the $1 which bought 100 cents' worth of goods and
services in 1957-59 buys under 94 cents' worth in these closing
weeks of 1963. " .
Prices are firming. The danger of a renewed price upswing
itauor ran he shrueperl off. But our recent record has heen good.
and as a result the vast majority of Americans who are get
ting anuual pay hikes and who have savings nesteggs earn
ing 4 per cent or more a year are coming out way ahead of
the economic game.
Book
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Tennessee Solon
Says Goldwater
Astraddle Fence
WASHINGTON (UPI) - A
Tennessee freshman congress
man who has had a political
field day with Sen. Barry Gold-
water's controversial sugges
tion that the government sell
the Tennessee Valley Authority
today said the Arizona Republi
can is "astraddle of the fence"
between public and private in
terest. ,
Goldwater's stand on T V A,
compared with his sponsorship of
a proposed Arizona reclamation
project, has placed the senator
"in a controversy of his own
making," Rep. Richard Fulton,
D-Tenn., said in a letter to the
Washington Post.
Fulton's letter apparently was
in answer to a letter Goldwa
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week.
Tax Exempt
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the TVA is tax exempt but pro
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Project would be "truly a rec
lamation project," Goldwater's
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Goldwater said the Arizona
Project would repay any feder
al loan in 50 years. But Fulton
said TVA also is repaying the
federal government.
He said by the end of the cur
rent year TVA would have re
turned nearly $500 million and
"over the next 54 years TVA
will pay the U. S. Treasury an
additional $2 billion from power
revenues, $1 billion of which
will be a return" of federal
funds used to build the project
and the other half "a dividend
to the taxpayers."
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PROMPT CONSIDERATION
WASHINGTON (UPI) - The
United States will give "prompt
consideration" to any proposals
for the sale of dairy products
to Russia or other European
Communist countries, but thus
far there has been no inquiries.
Raymond A. Iones, chief of
the Foreign Agricultural Serv
ice told Rep. Clement J. Za
blocki, D-Wis., in a letter
Thursday that "it would seem
desirable to sell dairy products
to these countries."
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