Andrew Elrod on the Politics of Inflation Control

Reviving Growth Keynesianism

What's the responsible thing to do if inflation starts to rise? This week we talk with Andrew Elrod, who recently completed a dissertation on the history of wage and price controls in America between 1940 and 1980 at UC Santa Barbara. It turns out that mainstream American history offers a number of options for dealing with accelerating prices; monetary policy doesn't have to be the only game in town.
"When my new theory has been duly assimilated and mixed with the politics and feelings and passions, I can't predict what the final upshot will be in its effect on action and affairs. The task of keeping efficiency wages reasonably stable... is a political rather than economic problem. I do not doubt that a serious problem will arise as to how wages are to be restrained when we have a combination of collective bargaining and full employment. But I am not sure how much light the analytical method can throw on this essentially political problem." - JMK
****** LINKS ******
Follow Andrew on twitter: @andrewelrod
Check out more of his writing here: https://andrewelrod.net/
And the articles we discussed today here:
https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-politics/andrew-elrod-specter-inflation
https://phenomenalworld.org/analysis/many-inflations
https://phenomenalworld.org/analysis/construction-labor-shortage
*** MENTIONED ***
Mark Erlich - https://lwp.law.harvard.edu/people/mark-erlich
David Weil - Fissured Workplace - https://www.fissuredworkplace.net/
Allen J. Matusow - The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s - https://ugapress.org/book/9780820334059/the-unraveling-of-america/