Combating Inflation Through Wage Negotiations: A Strategy for Public Administration
本文指出通胀是公共行政未有效应对的重大挑战，分析了1970年代美国实际工资下降的趋势，并探讨了政府通过高利率和高失业率对抗通胀的代价，对公共行政管理者有警示意义。
Inflation poses a challenge of fundamental importance to our society, but we in public administration have not responded. Since 1973, when the last American troops withdrew from Vietnam, the American public has consistently ranked inflation as the most important problem facing our nation.' That the public's concern is justified is best illustrated by disturbing trends in the compensation of people for the work which they perform. People made increasingly more money throughout the 1970s, but in 15 of the 40 quarters from 1970-79, real income-per-hour-worked in the private sector declined. Although a slight gain was registered for the decade as a whole, very little advance was made after 1973 and in seven of the last eight quarters of the decade real hourly compensation declined.2 Thus, the average amount of goods and services which the public could purchase for each hour worked declined with alarming frequency during the past decade in spite of higher money incomes. Such statistics disguise the fact that there are winners and losers in a time of inflation, but the average citizen has, indeed, been making more and enjoying it less in recent years. In the face of this sustained inflation, we observe that our government has become willing to impose unprecedented interest rates which cause considerable dislocations in our economy. We also observe that our government, as well as those of other nations, has been willing to incur high levels of unemployment in the struggle against inflation. Perhaps the greatest danger from the standpoint of public administration is the possibility that continuing high levels of inflation will prompt governments to sustain a much higher level of unemployment than would otherwise be tolerated, thereby straining the ability of public administrators to deliver social services, further equal employment opportunity, and maintain social order.