Price, quantities and qualities

Press, 6 May 1980, Page 24

Price, quantities and qualities

Sir, —When the Government, perhaps with tongue in cheek, equates wage rises with price increases, disqualifying the former relative to the latter in moralistic justification for a negative response to F.O.L. wage demands, an equally important aspect of this relativity appears to escape both parties, but more particularly the F.O.L. I refer to the systematic, constant, and grossly dishonest syndrome of invisible cost of living increases realised by means of depreciating quantities and qualities. Every purchaser clearly sees the daily double increase first in prices then in the depreciating value of the dollar, but the invisible increases function as surreptitiously reduced weights, thinner yarns in tighter and lighter garments, and increasingly adulterated and cheaper produced foodstuffs. Finally, the case of watered wines is a blatant example of this ruthless commercialism functioning under many hidden aspects described in an Americanism as “squeeze.”— Yours, etc., W. J. COLLINS. May 4, 1980.