Wednesday, February 24, 2021

"Carloadings"

Link

 

At that point, the text fades away, but no matter. I got what I wanted: "carloadings".

Before GDP, GNP. And before GNP, Carloadings. I love it.

 

See also: Two moments in the broad sweep

2 comments:

The Arthurian said...

Additional quotes from the Heilbroner article:

"a century ago there was no “fiscal policy,” no local, state, or federal payments for old-age penury or unemployment, no “disaster relief,” no parity payments to farmers, no Small Business Administration, no federal financing of mortgages or insurance of bank deposits."

An argument that cost-push pressure exists, where 100 years ago it did not (Remember, this article is from 1980!):
" The placing of government floors, the unification of the corporate economy, the increased leverage of unionism, and the prevailing tenor of expectations—all have worked to transform the depressionary propensities of late nineteenth-century capitalism into the inflationary propensities of late twentieth-century capitalism. As a result, we smile at the old adage that “what goes up must come down”: today we believe that what goes up will continue to go up, and we gear our actions accordingly.
From this point of view, the search for the “cause” of inflation takes on a different aspect. What becomes crucial is to understand that today’s economic structure propagates, magnifies, and sustains increases in costs or demand, instead of blocking, damping, or eliminating them."

again, from the article dated May 1 1980:
"I assume that we cannot break up our labor unions."
History.com says:
"On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan begins firing 11,359 air-traffic controllers striking in violation of his order for them to return to work."

How we fight inflation:
"The main purposes of severe fiscal and monetary policy are to create sufficient unemployment to temper the appetite of the big unions for higher wages, and to cause enough general hardship to cause entrepreneurs to trim their prices and housewives to trim their spending."

"In the decade of the 1950s our yearly inflation rate averaged 1.4 percent. In the decade of the 1960s it rose to 2.8 percent. During the 1970s it was just under 7 percent until 1979, when it broke through the double digit barrier. Today it is pressing toward 20 percent."

The Arthurian said...

RE: "Carloadings" as a measure of general economic activity...

"During the early parts of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover found himself looking at rail freight statistics and factory orders to try to get a grasp on what was happening. His lack of reliable information made his response to the crisis ineffective.

When Franklin Roosevelt came into office, the American economy was clearly in trouble, but there was no mechanism for telling whether things were getting better or worse. Enter Simon Kuznets...
" -- from Let’s Measure This Recession Better by George Dillard at Lessons from History at Medium.