Currently a level of unemployment of 7% or more seems to be required to keep inflation from accelerating, a level quite unacceptable as a permanent situation.

The nominal budget is a poor indicator of the impact of government outlays and revenues.

The supply-side effect of a restrictive monetary policy, moreover, is likely to be perverse. High interest rates enter into costs and thus exert inflationary pressure, as well as inhibiting the expansion of capacity or the introduction of cost -reducing capital improvements.

Firms would be given initial entitlements to gross markup on the basis of past performance, adjusted by changes in labor and capital inputs. This is somewhat similar to the definition of normal profits under some versions of the wartime excess -profits tax. Entitlements would be transferable and a competitive market established.

Balancing a nominal budget will solve nothing, and attempting to achieve such a spurious balance will produce much mischief.

... often analysis seems to be based on the assumption that future economic output is almost entirely determined by inexorable economic forces independently of government policy so that devoting more resources to one use inevitably detracts from availability for another.

Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain.