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4. For a single country a chronic tendency for relative
wage cost to increase in relation to other countries
might be a reason for tax favours to industry. For all
industrial countries taken together this reason does not
apply.
It goes without saying that the restrictionist policy
since 1974 and especially 1979 and 1980 has added to all
these reasons for a weakening of the stimulus to invest
a further and particularly strong one. Also the burden
of the public debt has become vastly increased by the
high interest policy.
The list of causes does not necessarily suggest how one
could undo them, but it gives perhaps food for thought.
II. Just as budget deficits and taxation also inflation has
started to be troublesome only after a time. In various
countries there has been a fairly long period of full employ
ment with moderate inflation rates - say of the order of 3 p.c.
The theoretical reflection of this has been the structural
theory of inflation which explains why a certain degree of
inflation must necessarily accompany full employment (when wages
are pulled up in industries with high productivity growth
the wages in other industries follow so that the growth rate of