Inflation Tells a Sad, Sad Tal @ Mey Hato Query: What’s in your dollar — for you? = Answer: Two things: What you put there; and, What you can take out. worth of purchasing power out of it today. If you saved that $1000 in 1943, it now Chiefly it is ‘the increase of the and industry. lic speeches, has listed the major government and industrial programs which have pumped pose a man now 65 years old started in 1915, new when he was 30, to buy an endowment. policy . floods market. that would pay him $200 a month in 1950. __ of money From ent 1947 sums on capital goods 1935-39 to fall. the ecvileninant since the war. They hit a peak in 1947, spending $19,200,000,000. Mortgage credit has leaped since Septem- 200 items bought by moderate- -income fami- — ber, 1945. . Some value 1949 heough support farm prices. | a Corporations have ‘spent. “extremely high” These calculations, based on U. s: Buteau of Labor statistics’ figures, are just a matter of simple arithmetic. BLS keeps a record of. began to rise and the dollar agencies, these pronennes paid out four billion dollars in subsidies to measured against worth. prices busy in clude: dollar has thrown ‘his calculations askew. The monthly $200 income will get him only Then into an already Using figures supplied from the ap-— plicable cae Now he will find that the cheapening | les in 34 cities. It takes the average cost. of these items during the 1935-39 period, and calls that 100. That is, during that period the average dollar peat 100 cents worth of goods. number Dr: Edwin G. Nourse, in some. of his pub- would be worth just $742 in goods.Or, to take an insurance smaseph: sup- its 1915 has cheapened the dollar? As more and more dae dollars in ‘circulation. dollars bid for goods and labor, competition drives prices up. And this rising spiral has been aided and abetted by both government If you put $1000 worth of sweat and ba into saving $1000 in 1939, you can take $597 $89 worth of goods when What $10,300,000,000 worth of . mortgages have Been Weiltten through the fed- eral housing administration; some $9,500,000,000 through the Veterans Administration. _ Instalment credit has: jumped $1 800, 000 7 j 000 since last June. This year’s insurance refunds to veterans : — Today it takes $1.66 to buy a : will total $2,800,000,000. dollar’s worth of goods:~ Similarly — _ And so it is that if you are an old. tashioned. the purchasing power of today’s dollar can be __ American who believes in saving each year, and you have succeeded in putting by $1000 compared with any year for which records have been ‘kept - _ -all to the detriment of those _ yearly from 1939 to 1949, you will find your-| self with $11,000, that is worth $8635 now, who have spent years saving: Up. for :a uate You have lost $2365 by your thrift. day. — } |