'Free Enterprise1 in the Sky
What this country needs is a good depression. I know the last one was roughÛÓmy father told me all about it. There were bread lines, high unemployment, widespread poverty and, in short, a general calamity. The Depression did, however, lower prices. My father told me that, too.</br></br>A depression would catch Donald Trump tight around the kneecaps. It would get Pan Am in the neck. I name those two organizations (Trump is not a man but a marketing mechanism) because more or less in unison they raised their fares on the Washington-New York-Boston shuttle by 20 percentÛÓfrom $99 to $119. The price of hie! has gone up, they say.</br></br>I And so it has. But from the .very moment .Trump bought the old Eastern Shuttle and named itÛÓpresumably following careful market researchÛÓafter himself, he made it perfectly dear that he was willing to go mano-a-mano with Pan Am in every area but one; price. The 'planes were repainted, and those of us who travel on them were told that soon we would get new bathrooms. You cannot imagine tow thrilled I was.</br></br>did. Flight attendants would get new uniforms. They did. Departures would be made on scheduleÛÓan example of Trump bravado that showed that even he has his limitations. No one has left either La Guardia Airport in New York or National Airport here on time since 1954.</br></br>As befits the free enterprise system. Pan Am responded. Its food got better. It took out full-page ads in the newspapers to announce that anything Trump could do, it could do better. Still, like most shuttle users, I go for the first plane I canÛÓno matter what the airline. On a 45-minute flight, food is not a concernÛÓand neither, for that matter, is a bathroom.