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for income policy and consensus policy are very favorable 
since there is agreat concentration of decision making power 
on all sides. But the very conditions which make incomes policy 
and short run policy in ge neral so emminently successful 
involve great disadvantages for long-term economic policy. 
The required concentration and stability of power involves 
great conservativism and immobility. There is a lack of 
interest in long~t,erm policy altogether, and the climate 
created by entrenched hierarchies is quite unfavorable to 
innovation and technology policy. 
What struck me in the discussion were the doubts, partly open 
partly implicit, about wage structure and the related policy. 
We know that inspite of professions of solidarity wages 
are vastly unequal in many countries with concentrated 
union power. They can not be otherwise if the weak industries 
and firms are to be protected. Hence Meidner's principle of 
brutality - let the weak firms die - is a decisive condition 
for equality. But can we afford it? ( It may also be a 
regional problem ). Inequality and wage drift are also 
of importance for inflation and for the structural problems 
( the declining basic industries have high wages ). 
In view of the great interest of these questions 
c~^ 
it seems to me that a comparative study of trade union 
organisation in relation to wage formation, technology and 
training in a number of countries would be a very promising 
line of research.At the same time it will be necessary to 
extend such a study to the dynamical and historical aspects 
that is to the changes which have happened and are happening 
in the field of labour relations and trade unions ( we have 
to think, for example, of the effect of the decline of the 
basic and smoke stake industries, the rise of new industries 
and attitudes of management).