Our Softening Price Structure: Deflation, Not Inflation, May Be in Offing
A WHOLE generation of Americans, never having known any other trend, has grown up with the impression that creeping inflation is normal.</br></br>With but minor interruptions, prices have been inchingÛÓsometimes gallopingÛÓupward ever since the late 30s. From 1949 on, the cost of living has risen an average of a bit more than 2 per cent a year.</br></br>This 2 per cent drift has become as American as apple pie and no less eminent an economist than the late Sumner H. Slichter of Harvard has held that the drift is not only normal but desirable.</br></br>Other economists have vied with one another in projecting the inflationary trend into the Soaring Sixties (recently roehristened the Sober Sixties by one spoilsport). Two years ago the public nodded sagely over the best-selling pages of the KiplingersÛª ÛÏBoom and Inflation Ahead.Û prices in our economyÛÓa sofening that suggests not only may inflation be licked but deflation may be in the offing.</br></br>Û¢	The Department of LaborÛªs wholesale price index stood at 119.2 in September, down .5 from a year ago and even with the 1958 average.