Bafflegab in Industry  

There is No "Cost-of-Living" Index

The only official yardstick we have for measuring how infla­tion is hitting our pocketbooks is the Government's Con­sumer Price Index, and this is popularly called the cost-of-living index.

This week the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest report on the index showed it has risen less than 1.5 per cent in the past twelve months. Obviously, despite the fact that the head­lines out of Washington are loaded with talk about inflation, the Government's own yardstick doesn't indicate we've had much of a price rise since early 1958. Quite the contrary. An index which holds within a 1.5 per cent range over a year is im­pressively stable.

But is this index really a cost-of-living index? It is not. It never was intended to be.

Does this index tell the full story of what has happened to the cost of living of an average American family in recent years? It does not tell that story. It never was intended to tell it.

Never has the Consumer Price Index been so important in the United States economy and in national politics as today. Right now, the wages of more than 4,000,000 employees in this country are tied to its fluctuations. Month after month, as the index hits the front pages, its movements vitally affect the psychology of businessmen, consumers, and Washington lawmakers. Now with the index barely moving in the face of all the debate about inflation, confusion about its meaning is bound to intensify. Just what is this index? What does it measure and not measure?

The Consumer Price Index includes about three hundred goods and services which are priced in forty-six cities. The items are designed to represent a market basket of the families of city wage earners and salaried employees, and they were selected on the basis of the spending patterns of these families back in 1950 and 1951. At that time, "weights" were given to each item to indicate its importance in a typical city family's budget.

Since 1952, no changes have been made in the basic importance assigned to items in the market basket. The index was last thor­oughly reviewed seven years ago.

In the above paragraph lies the heart of this report. Here is pinpointed a fundamental and growing weakness of the index as a measurement of an American family's buying patterns and living costs now. For since the early fifties family incomes have climbed more than 25 per cent, and family spending patterns always change as incomes rise. Since the early fifties, new products have come on the market, public preferences have undergone some major shifts. Since the early fifties, more and more families have moved to the suburbs, bought homes, had children, and have dramatically altered their way and standard of life. If any family is buying the same type, amount, and quality of goods and services it bought in 1950-51, it's far from typical. I'd say that family doesn't exist.

Being even more specific, you're almost certainly spending rela­tively more of your income today on medical care and drugs than in the early fifties. You're undoubtedly spending a larger share of your income on repairs of appliances and other major items. You're probably spending comparatively more on driving your own car and comparatively less on subways, buses, trains. The types of food you buy surely have changed.

The Commissioner of Labor Statistics, Ewan Clague, himself says it: "The index does not measure the complete cost of living." It measures only "one factor in the cost of living, namely changes in prices. . . ." The longer the index goes without revision, the "more likely that it will not accurately reflect the current family buying pattern, and price changes, either up or down, may not quite represent the true situation. . . ."

Considering how much is riding on the fluctuations in this one index, how crucial it has become in psychology, wage negotiations, government and business policies, it seems incredible that this woefully inadequate yardstick is all we have to measure changes in our cost of living. But incredible as it may seem, that's the fact.

Now the overhaul called for in the above report, originally dated March 1959, is finally beginning. You'll read this story in Chapter Six.

What's Your Dollar Worth?

What's your dollar worth?

If you're fairly up to date on your bafflegab, you'll probably answer: 'The dollar is worth only forty-eight cents." By that you would mean that measured in terms of the official index of consumer prices, the dollar which bought one hundred cents of goods and services in 1939 will buy only forty-eight cents of goods and services today.

But why automatically accept 1939 as the yardstick? True, 1939 was the last year before the outbreak of World War II and thus it marks a turning point in history. But 1939 was neither a normal year nor an especially happy one. What's more, to millions of Americans now earning paychecks, spending and saving money, 1939 was "before my time." They were still at school, only in­directly concerned with the dollar's value, or not even bom.

So let's say you measure the value of the dollar against what it was buying in 1947-49. That period marked the end of World War II and the first postwar inflation spiral. Also during those years, millions of today's jobholders went to work for the first time. If you took 1948 as a yardstick, your answer would have to be: "The dollar is now worth eighty-three cents."

Clearly, the dollar has continued to lose value in the past ten years—or putting it another way, prices of goods and services we buy have continued to climb. But just as clearly, the pace of loss in its buying power has been a lot slower since 1949 than since 1939.

The fundamental but often ignored fact is that the worth of the dollar today depends on the year against which you choose to compare its worth. More specifically, changes in the dollar's buying power are measured by changes in the Consumer Price Index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. To permit comparisons, the index assumes the average of prices checked at a specific date —called the "base period"—to be equal to 100. Now here's the record of changes in consumer prices against the averages in various base periods.

There's a reason for choosing each base year, of course. For instance, 1913 marked the start of the index, 1920 marked the peak of the post World War I inflation, 1929 marked the year of the stock market collapse, 1933 marked the bottom of the great depression, and so on.

But notice how different are the values of today's dollar as compared with different base years! I can "prove" to you that as of today, the annual rate of loss in the dollar's value (the rate of inflation) has been only 1 per cent if I go back to 1920. That would be a most comforting record. Or I can "prove" to you that the annual rate of loss in the dollar's value has been almost 4 per cent if I go back to 1939. That's hardly a loss to shrug off.

It cannot be denied that the dollar is worth less today than in the past. But how much less is it worth? Choose your year for comparison and you can decide and prove your answer by the official statistics!

A Budget Bafflegab Guide

Fiscal Year, Appropriations, New Obligational Authority, Ex­penditures, Receipts, Regular Budget Surplus, Cash Surplus . . .

What, oh what, do the words mean ? ? ?

You're among the minority if you understand even a fraction of the technical terms used every year in Presidential budget messages, for these represent financial bafflegab at its worst. But it's so important a subject, I'll at least try to decipher them.

fiscal year: The Government bases its financial estimates on a year running from July to July—as against our usual January to January calendar year. The budget covers the twelve months beginning July 1 of any year and ending June 30 of the following year. Thus, it is called the 1962 fiscal year budget when it is submitted in January, 1961.

appropriations: This is a total the President asks Congress to authorize the Administration to spend. When Congress grants an appropriation of a specific total for a specific purpose, the Government agency concerned has the power to spend the money for the specified purpose, but it doesn't necessarily spend the money in a certain period. It may spend part of the appropriation in the current year or part in the following year or part in years thereafter.

new obligational authority: This is an infuriatingly ponder­ous term the budget-makers use to cover all types of authorizations granted by Congress for the spending of money. The bafflegab boys will wince, but this phrase and "appropriations" really are synonyms.

expenditures: This is the sum the President estimates the Gov­ernment actually will spend in the twelve months beginning this July 1 to pay salaries and meet its bills. The spending total is usually lower than the appropriations figure. The significance of a lower spending than appropriations total is that it telegraphs an uptrend in spending totals in the years ahead as appropriations are translated into expenditures.

receipts: The sum of money the President forecasts the Treasury will take in during the twelve months under discussion— primarily, of course, from income taxes imposed on us and cor­porations.

regular budget surplus or deficit: The difference between the spending and the receipts forecast for the fiscal year.

cash surplus or deficit: Ah, that's something else. The regular Administration budget, you see, doesn't include the vast opera­tions of the Government's trust funds—for instance, the huge Social Security Fund which annually takes in billions and pays out billions. When these operations are included, the totals the Government pays out in cash and collects in cash are far larger than those headlined in the regular budget.

estimates: That's what each budget consists of. Until Congress passes the appropriations bills, until the money is spent and the taxes roll in, the whole package is "estimated." It isn't until the books are actually closed each July 1 that "estimated" becomes "actual."

big: Today's Federal Government.

bigger: Tomorrow's Federal Government.

Does a Budget Surplus "Hurt" Business?

The staunch Republican businessmen around the dinner table were extolling the achievements of the Eisenhower Administration. "And don't you forget for one minute the way Eisenhower has fought for a balanced budget and won," said one. "Look at the one-billion-dollar surplus he got in last year's budget despite terrific odds. Look at the way it's being used to reduce the public debt."

"Yes, plenty of people are looking at that surplus, but not as joyously as you are," answered I. "In fact, there are lots of experts, many as conservative and Republican as you are, who are begin­ning to suspect that what's wrong with business now is that surplus."

If the shocked silence and then befuddled conversation that followed may be considered any indication of public understand­ing of what a surplus or deficit in the Federal Government's budget can mean to jobs, paychecks, and profits in our economy, misunderstanding is monumental. Since I suspect misunderstand­ing is no less than that, here is a simple explanation of my com­ment. First, some facts.

In the twelve months from July 1958 to July 1959, the Federal budget was in the red to the tune of $12,400,000,000, the biggest deficit in peacetime history. The heaviest deficits occurred in the third and fourth quarters of 1958, when business was in its sharp­est upturn.

In the twelve months from July 1959 to July 1960, the Federal budget was in the black to the tune of $1,100,000,000, the most spectacular swing from deficit to surplus on record. The heaviest surpluses occurred in the first and second quarters of 1960, when business was perceptibly slowing down.

Is there a justification for linking the facts that business upturn and deficit coincided, business slowdown and surplus coincided? Yes. The swing to budget surplus—both in its timing and in the way it was achieved—well may be the key to what was wrong with the economy in 1960. Here is why:

When the budget is in the red, the Federal Government is putting more money into the economy than it is taking out in the form of taxes. This additional flow of money into the national stream is a stimulant. It makes jobs, fattens paychecks, pads profits. There is no disagreement about this at all, which is why both political parties now accept the desirability of a budget deficit to combat recessions.

When the budget is in the black, the Federal Government is taking more money out of the economy in taxes than it is putting in. This subtraction of money from the national income stream is a restraining influence. It acts as a brake on demand. This is why a budget surplus in a phase of inflationary boom is so desirable.

But a sudden swing from great deficit to surplus in an economic upturn which isn't so robust may be too much of a brake. In the fourth quarter of 1959 the Government put $4,500,000,000 more cash into the income stream than it took out. In the first quarter it took out $4,400,000,000 more than it put in. That is a sensational reduction in the Federal government's contribution to the income stream, and it could explain in large part the slowdown of 1960.

A Dictionary of Recession

What does the word mean? What's the difference between a breather, an adjustment, a shake-out, a slump, a recession, a depression? Having asked these questions of myself, I herewith submit my definitions.

breather: A breather suggests that production is holding in a fairly straight line, unemployment is rising a bit but not enough to fuss about. It implies we're not growing, but we're not sliding either. A breather is a temporary pause in economic expansion.

You might say that the economy was in a breather—flattening out, leveling, pausing—between January and August of 1957. In January, industrial production was at an index of 146 and in August, it was at 145; in January, unemployment was 4.2 per cent of the labor force and in August it was 4.3 per cent of the labor force. That was a flattening.

rolling readjustment: This means some industries are going up while others are simultaneously going down and the ups and downs pretty much offset each other. Business is in neither a general advance nor a general decline. To a certain extent, 1956 was a year of rolling adjustment. While the automobile and housing industries were getting "rolled," business spending on new plants and equipment was rising at a roaring pace and con­sumers were freely spending their rising incomes on many services and things.

You also would be savvy if you said our economy was in an enigmatic balance, flattening out, in a fluid state, subject to countervailing winds, lacking zip or zest, stalled at a high level.

inventory shake-out: This means a lot of businessmen have decided they have too many goods on hand and they begin to clear their shelves. While they're liquidating their inventories, naturally they cut their new orders, and this slows production. An inventory shake-out is supposed to be short, because after a while the businessmen's shelves are cleared and they have to reorder goods so they can continue selling. The 1948-49 and 1953-54 recessions were primarily inventory shake-outs.

slump: This means the economy has gone into a tailspin. It implies a fast, severe, painful drop in many areas. We had a slump in 1937-38 when in one year production crashed 33 per cent. We had a similar slump (bust) in 192-21.

recession: This implies a general business decline, involving sliding production in most fields, falling incomes, profits, rising unemployment, failures, etc. I would say a recession means a drop in production ranging from 10 to 20 or so per cent, a rise in joblessness to the 4,000,000-6,000,000 level. It also should end within a year and a half.

The recessions of 1948-49, 1953-54, and 1957-58 fit this defini­tion.

depression: This is the works. It implies a slump in production of over 25 per cent, joblessness at the 7,000,000-8,000,000 level, a decline that is pervasive and prolonged. The last major depression was 1929-33.

Let the bafflegab boys wince. These simple descriptions point up the distinctions for me and I trust they do for you too.

A Dictionary for "Neither-Nor"

In 1960, when the American economy started out the so-called "Sizzling Sixties" by fizzling instead, the bafflegab boys came up with such new beauties as the following to obscure what they were saying.

Business is "satisfactory." Does "satisfactory" mean business is "producing ... to meet expectations" as the dictionary defines the word? The economy is "in a moderate rise to new highs." Is a moderate rise 2 per cent, or 10 per cent, or more, or less? We are in a state of "equilibrium at a high level" and the economy is moving "onto a plateau." What, I mumble in irritation, are "equilibrium" and "plateau" supposed to mean to our jobs?

What's more, business is not "producing ... to meet expecta­tions" and thus fulfilling the dictionary's definition of "satisfac­tory." For most economists, industrialists, and financiers predicted at the start of 1960 that we'd be in a strong upswing in 1960 and we have not met those expectations. Auto sales haven't zoomed as automakers expected; steel consumption hasn't soared as steel­makers expected.

"Satisfactory" is not a topnotch compliment in our country. (That notation on your school report card, you may remember, meant you had a better than passing grade, but you weren't in the top groups.) And an economy which is performing only in a satisfactory manner can too easily slip below passing if a greater effort isn't made.

The economy is "in a moderate rise to new highs." A "moder* ate" rise means an increase well below 10 per cent and more likely below 5 per cent. The white-tower boys can shout to the skies that this rise is best for us because we can "sustain" the pace, but most Americans, in private, at least, don't agree. Such restraint in our dynamic economy seems dull, disappointing. Put­ting it in statistics, our total output of goods and services has crossed the historic $500,000,000,000 mark, but now the rate of rise has slowed to a creep.

"Routine prosperity": That's the condition in which a lot of experts say our economy is right now. It suggests that business is just droning along at an exceedingly high level, neither moving toward renewed boom nor toward a downturn of important magni­tude. These experts insist you must call the American economy prosperous, but there's little enthusiasm about the prosperity to­day. It has become routine, a word defined by Webster's New World Dictionary as meaning, "a regular, more or less unvarying procedure, customary, prescribed, or habitual, as of business or daily life."

It's a "state of equilibrium at a high level" and a "plateau." These words are not only pure bafflegab but also deeply disturb­ing. The dictionary defines "equilibrium" as "a state of balance between opposing forces... whose resultant is zero," and "plateau" as "a flat thing." In our economy, standing still—even at a peak level—is the equivalent of falling back. We must grow if we are to employ our expanding labor force, absorb our own production, maintain our leadership. If all we're on is a "plateau" and all we're in is "equilibrium," we'd better start thinking hard how to get off on the upside.

The words being used today are not the words of recession. They are not the words of boom. They are descriptions of a neither-nor economy—something rare in modern times which cannot, will not last.

The neither-nor economy didn't last. As 1960 wore on, it became increasingly clear to objective observers that we were into the fourth business recession of post-World War II. Because of the Presidential election campaign, discussion was blurred and a new phrase—"great pause"—became a favorite among GOP politicians especially, who figured that voters were conditioned to thinking of a pause as a "refreshing" thing that would pre­pare us to sparkle up the economic road again.

But to most economists, the bafflegab became only an annoy­ance. And while at this writing, it appears that the 1960-61 busi­ness downturn will be recorded in the history books as among the mildest of modern times, it still warrants the definition

"recession.'

Then there are also such bafflegab phrases as:

"Creeping inflation": With this one, you convey the impres­sion of a gradual creep upward in the cost of living, a gradual creep downward in the dollar's buying power. There's nothing sensational about the trend; the "creep" is described specifically as a rise in prices not exceeding an annual average of 2 per cent or so over the years.

"Preventive recession": This is what some of our country's top men in recent years believe we should have encouraged to stop creeping inflation. The idea is: Let conditions worsen—or help them to worsen—to the point where a few million more will be unemployed and both businessmen and union leaders will redis­cover what it takes to make and keep a buck. A little recession now will prevent a big bust later, say they, for it will force unions into line, sober up businessmen who keep raising prices, curb the speculators, give all of us a healthy chastening.

"Counsel of despair': Here is how other top men condemn the advice of those who argue for a preventive recession. Prosperity is not so painful, they retort, that we have to go out of our way to kill it. Asking for a preventive recession is a retreat from reason, a counsel of despair.

"Sound money": That's a stable dollar—a dollar which does not decline in buying power year after year. A stable dollar means relatively stable prices. We've had mighty few and pitifully short periods of sound money between the start of World War II in 1940 and the late 1950s but in the last couple of years, we've come as close to reasonably stable prices as any realist could expect.

Armed with these phrases, you're prepared for any session with the bafflegab group. You may not really know what you're talking about, but many of them won't either—and the lingo will prove you're hep.

Bafflegab in Industry

What "200,000 Houses" Means

"A real pickup in housing has become crucial to a revival in business,” I was saying. "We can't count on the auto industry to give us a lift this spring; that key industry is letting us down. It has to be housing, and, in addition to the new emergency housing bill, what I'd like to see is—"

At this point, the editor interrupted. "What do you mean when you say a housing pickup is 'crucial'? What do you mean when you call autos a 'key' industry?" As I stared at him, he went on, "We get tens of thousands of words from Washington describing the new housing legislation and saying it's designed to stimulate building of two hundred thousand new houses. But we get no stories spelling out why two hundred thousand extra houses is so important to business. We get truckloads of stuff from Detroit discussing the sag in production and sales of new cars. But we get no stories explaining why this sag should be such a drag on the economy generally. Go ahead, Sylvia. . . . Spell it out.”

Okay, I've collected the statistics and here I go, spelling it out.

First, this is why a healthy home-building industry is so essential to a healthy economy in general. Home building ranks second in importance perhaps only to food and food processing among America's major industries. In recent years the value of new houses constructed annually has been running close to $16,000,000,000, and when land and other nonconstruction factors are taken into account, the value of the industry's product probably runs to $20,000,000,000 a year. The industry has directly been providing about 2,500,000 jobs a year, with about half the total involved in work on the housing site.

Around three thousand different items go into every new home. Thus, any change in the volume of home building is felt by thousands of factories and by thousands of suppliers all over the country as well as by the builders and workers employed in the industry itself. Residential building uses one-third of America's total output of lumber, two-thirds of all brick, four-fifths of all gypsum. The sale of a new home generates the sale of about $1,500 of furnishings and equipment just in the first year of occupancy. And, of course, when new homes are built, they create demand for other types of construction—utility expansions, schools, stores, and churches.

And now, what would the building of 200,000 additional houses a year mean?

The 200,000 houses would consume 3,800,000 gallons of paint, 200,000,000 square feet of asphalt roofing shingles, 1,900,000,000 board feet of lumber, 280,000,000 square feet of wall and ceil­ing insulation, 1,000,000,000 square feet of gypsum wallboard and lath. The houses would use 230,000,000 board feet of finish wood flooring, 940,000,000 bricks, 400,000 tons of steel, 40,000,000 square feet of aphalt tile flooring, 208,000,000 square feet of softwood plywood. The homes would create a demand for 14,000 air conditioners, 4,800,000 sacks of cement, 2,200,000 elec­tric switches, 20,000,000 square feet of linoleum floor covering, 2,400,000 doors. They would absorb 254,000 bathtubs, 312,000 toilets, 22,000,000 square feet of ceramic tile, 2,000,000 kitchen cabinets, 64,000 garbage disposal units, 110,000 kitchen exhaust fans, 5,000,000 convenience outlets, 146,000 hot-air furnaces with ducts.

Enough! The striking statistics surely dramatize what only 200,000 additional new houses would mean to industries turning out everything from steel to shingles. And if we could push hous­ing back just to the level of 1955—which would involve a boost of 400,000 houses over the current building rate—this would dou­ble every statistic you've just read. (Multiply a few of them by two and you'll really grasp the impact of any important increase in house construction on America's economy!)

Why Autos Hold a Key

Why this intense preoccupation with what goes on in this one industry? Just why is the record of production, of sales, of costs in the automobile field so vital to American business in general? Here are the facts behind the familiar generalization that the auto industry also is a key one.

The motor transport industries account for one of every seven jobs in the United States. More than ten million Americans are employed in motor vehicle and parts manufacture, in the produc­tion and handling of crude and refined petroleum, in the selling and servicing of motor vehicles, in making or maintaining roads, in truck and bus transportation. And even this ten million total doesn't tell the whole tale, for it doesn't include the many others employed in such fields as the manufacture of automobile storage batteries and in the insurance and financing businesses serving highway transportation.

One of every six businesses in our country is automotive—and the fields range all the way from car manufacture to car repair, from the local gas station to the storage garage.

In 1958, the auto industry used 10,125,000 tons of steel—17 per cent of the nation's steel output. The auto industry is second only to the construction industry in the consumption of steel.

In one average standard-size car there are about 2,467 pounds of steel and more than 52 pounds of aluminum. More than 30 per cent of the radios produced in 1958 were for cars. The auto industry alone absorbs 70 per cent of the finished rubber products of the country.

I could go on and on, but surely the point is made. A drop in auto output in Detroit can immediately result in layoffs in an upholstery or glass or aluminum plant a thousand miles away. And vice versa, a rise in production in Detroit can spur businesses which on the surface seem to have only the most remote tie to autos.

It was the auto industry's roaring prosperity which sent the nation to a feverish boom peak in 1955. Since then the industry has been a neutral to dragging force on our economy. It still hasn't duplicated that boom or influence.

The spectacular success of the United States-produced compact car has slashed these totals a bit, of course, for the simple reason that the compacts absorb much less steel, rubber, glass, upholstery fabric, gas, oil, etc. than standard-size cars. If compacts do account for 50 per cent of Detroit's output in 1961, the automakers will take substantially less of the steel industry's output, less glass than in recent years, proportionately less of other basic materials. Still, the fundamental point remains unaltered. What happens in Detroit affects cash registers and psychology the nation over.

The Ghost Writers

Bafflegab is in part a product of advertising, in part a product of the experts' jargon. But is it not also, in part, a natural result of the fact that too many of our national figures no longer do their own communicating?

The voice of the high-IQ, high-powered, high-priced public relations adviser that came over the phone was enthusiastic. "I'm sending down a speech on foreign economic policy that's a smasher," said he. "So-and-so (he named a nationally known industrialist) is going to deliver it here in New York next week. I've been slaving over it for weeks. Honestly, it says things you and I believe in."

"Fine,” said I, "send it down. Does So-and-so believe in it?"

My friend of many years chuckled. "He'd better. Anyway, he's a good guy and after he delivers this, he'll defend the views."

I chuckled also as I hung up. Then I picked up the current issue of a business monthly, Duns Review, and started thumbing through. Suddenly my eye stopped at the top of page 39. "Take the ghost-written speech," I read. "I say that if the executive cannot write his own speech, let him make none. If he is tongue-tied in public, it is because he is tongue-tied in private; he simply has nothing of significance to say. . . .

"Let him stand up and say to an audience precisely what he said to his seatmate on the 8:04 that morning or what he said to his associates at lunch. It is the views of the man himself the public seek to probe, not those of his script technician. . . ."

At that instant, the real significance of the conversation I'd just had with my public relations friend fell into focus. Clarence B. Randall, a thoughtful industrialist who retired as head of the Inland Steel Company to become a world-respected economic consultant to the government, had had the courage to pinpoint a profound lack among many of our industrial leaders today. He had also helped explain why despite all their efforts to "communicate," so many of our top businessmen are not getting their story through to the worker, the stockholder, the customer, and so on. Here's Mr. Randall's theme.

American industrialists today, says he, have an irresistible urge to communicate. Mr. Randall thinks that's fine, as long as the things businessmen say are "wise and true."

Take the customer. "At the top of our voices, we cry our wares . . . but to promise one product and deliver another of inferior quality or with an undisclosed price component is sheer chicanery."

Take the worker. "We tell him earnestly and repetitively that his interest parallels ours and that what we do is well calculated to raise his standard of living but we need to know whether, within his own frame of reference, he can accept our statements as reflecting full integrity of purpose. . . . Here . . . actions speak . . ."

Take the stockholder. "We entice them to the annual meeting with every blandishment at our command . . . but when it comes to the exercise of the prerogatives of ownership, we ... do not vouchsafe them the opportunity of making even one little cross on a piece of paper once a year in token recognition of the fact that we work for them."

Take the government at every level. "We hardly communicate at all in our own right. We turn all that over to our trade associa­tion . . . which communicates . . . only the lowest common denominator of opinion."

What Mr. Randall is crying out for is conviction on the part of his fellow industrialists—beliefs that come after the business­man has taken the time to think, re-evaluate, and restate this system's purposes and aims. It is a message every American should ponder well!