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Epilogue: 1920s to Present

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Inflation Decade, 1910—1920

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Abstract

The consumer price index (1982–1984 = 100) fell to 16.8 in 1922, then stabilized. It rose only slightly in the mid-1920s and subsided to 17.1 in 1928 and 1929—a record of price stability unmatched during the rest of the century. Subsequent price levels were much more unsettled, beginning with abrupt deflation of the CPI to 13.0 by 1933. After that, except for a few small dips, the CPI rose almost every year, sometimes moderately but with several bursts of rapid inflation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    HSCam, CC1.

  2. 2.

    HSCam, Ba4362, Ca11; Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” QJE 118 (2003): 8.

  3. 3.

    Kathleen G. Donohue, Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Idea of the Consumer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 174–184; Lawrence B. Glickman, “The Strike in the Temple of Consumption: Consumer Activism and Twentieth-Century American Political Culture,” Journal of American History 88 (2001): 99–126 (quotation 126).

  4. 4.

    Investigation of Economic Problems, Hearings before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, February 13–14, 1933 (GPO, 1933), 2 (first quotation); Meltzer, 1: 277–78, 342, 400, 411, 418 (quotation), 728–29.

  5. 5.

    Meltzer, 1: 271–379, 411–12, 416 (quotation), 435, 502–524.

  6. 6.

    David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 118, 138–159, 184–85, 355–361; Donohue, Freedom from Want, 244–275; Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 162.

  7. 7.

    Emily E. LB. Tuarog, Politics of the Pantry: Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 20–24; Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 108, 235–37.

  8. 8.

    StatAb, 1942, 378; StatAb, 1944–45, 423.

  9. 9.

    Meltzer, 1: 587–595; Hugh Rockoff, America’s Economic Way of War: War and the American Economy from the Spanish-American War to the Persian Gulf War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 125, 171.

  10. 10.

    Jeffrey G. Williamson and Peter H. Lindert, American Inequality: A Macroeconomic History (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 84–86; HSCam, Cc1, Ba4362, Bc103.

  11. 11.

    Meltzer, 1: 579, 597; HSCam, Ca9, Cj42, Cj45.

  12. 12.

    Hugh Rockoff, Drastic Measures: A History of Wage and Price Controls in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 85–98, 109, 128–130; Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 197–99.

  13. 13.

    StatAb, 1944–1945, 423; StatAb, 1947, 285; Rockoff, Drastic Measures, 145, 150–57.

  14. 14.

    Untitled poster at https://catalog.archives.gov/OpaAPI/media/514088, accessed Feb. 9, 2020; Rockoff, Drastic Measures, 108–9.

  15. 15.

    Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 197–99; Rockoff, Drastic Measures, 128–130, 147–49.

  16. 16.

    Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 195, 211; Thomas A. Stapleford, The Cost of Living in America: A Political History of Economic Statistics, 1880–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 189–191, 219–245.

  17. 17.

    Nathan S. Balke and Robert J. Gordon, “Historical Data,” in The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, ed. Gordon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 795–96, 805; StatAb, 1944–45, 423; 1949, 308; George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972), 535, 555, 561; Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 222–25; Rockoff, Drastic Measures, 99–100.

  18. 18.

    Allen J. Matusow, Farm Policies and Politics in the Truman Years (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 52–60; Rockoff, Drastic Measures, 101–8; StatAb, 1947, 243; 1949, 308.

  19. 19.

    Philip Cagan, Persistent Inflation: Historical and Policy Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 57; Meltzer, 1: 582, 609; Rockoff, Drastic Measures, 174–76, 234–36; Rockoff, America’s Economic Way of War, 178–180.

  20. 20.

    StatAb, 1949, 308; Lawrence B. Glickman, Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 263; Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 239; Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage, 2004), 105.

  21. 21.

    Stapleford, Cost of Living, 253–55; Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 252–56.

  22. 22.

    Gallup, Gallup Poll, 797; StatAb, 1949, 308; StatAb, 1951, 282.

  23. 23.

    Rockoff, Drastic Measures, 177 (quotation), 178–186; Rockoff, America’s Economic Way of War, 252–53; Meltzer, 1: 583, 694.

  24. 24.

    Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, 253 (quotation), 254–56; HSCam, Cc1; Gallup, Gallup Poll, 1225, 1344, 1447, 1451, 1493, 1514–15, 1632.

  25. 25.

    Rockoff, America’s Economic Way of War, 284–86; J. Bradford De Long, “America’s Peacetime Inflation: The 1970s,” in Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy, ed. Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 252–55; HSCam, Cc1.

  26. 26.

    Meltzer, 2: 448–450, 527–29; Robert J. Samuelson, The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence (New York: Random House, 2008), 95–96.

  27. 27.

    Cohen, Consumers’ Republic, 355–378.

  28. 28.

    Ibid.

  29. 29.

    Stapleford, Cost of Living in America, 254, 294, 342–43, 361–66.

  30. 30.

    December to December percentages from BLS, CPI Inflation Calculator, https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm, accessed March 7, 2020.

  31. 31.

    Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 522–23, 547 (quotation), 637, 659; HSCam, Ca11; Piketty and Saez, “Income Inequality,” 9–10.

  32. 32.

    Sixteen polls in George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1972–1977 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1978); published annually thereafter: thirteen in Gallup Poll … 1978; 1979; 1980; 1981.

  33. 33.

    HSCam, Ca9, Cj84, Cj88.

  34. 34.

    Allen J. Matusow, Nixon’s Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, and Votes (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 150–163, 184–198, 221–233; Cohen, Consumers’ Republic, 369–370; Robert D. McFadden, “Boycott Ends with Call for New Protests,” NYT, Apr. 8, 1973, 1; Gallup, Gallup Poll … 1972–1977, 186.

  35. 35.

    Matusow, Nixon’s Economy, 248–274.

  36. 36.

    David W. Callahan, “Defining the Rate of Underlying Inflation,” Monthly Labor Review 104 (Sept. 1981): 16.

  37. 37.

    Meltzer, 2: 884–910, 985–991; Burton I. Kaufman, The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 106, 113–15, 142.

  38. 38.

    StatAb, 1981, 467–68; Kaufman, Presidency of James Earl Carter, 137–38; “President’s Address to Country on Energy Problems,” NYT, July 16, 1979, A10.

  39. 39.

    De Long, “America’s Peacetime Inflation,” 272; Meltzer, 2: 1009–1011.

  40. 40.

    Meltzer, 2: 1011–1064, 1081; “President Carter’s Statement on Nation’s Economy,” NYT, March 15, 1980, 34; Samuelson, Great Inflation, 120–25.

  41. 41.

    Samuelson, Great Inflation, 26–27.

  42. 42.

    Meltzer, 2: 1065, 1074; HSCam, Ea681.

  43. 43.

    Meltzer, 2: 1085; Samuelson, Great Inflation, 135.

  44. 44.

    Meltzer, 2: 1088–1127, 1195–96, 1209; HSCam, Cc1; Cj1206; Samuel H. Williamson, “Annual Inflation Rates in the United States, 1775–2019,” MeasuringWorth, 2020, at www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/, accessed Mar. 27, 2020.

  45. 45.

    Stapleford, Cost of Living in America, 342–43, 373–74.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 293–341.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 17 (quotation), 313.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 297–98, 299 (quotation), 311–17.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 346–47; “The Search for a Better Measure of Living Costs,” Nation’s Business 64 (May 1976): 67–68.

  50. 50.

    Gordon M. Fisher, “The Development and History of the Poverty Thresholds,” Social Security Bulletin 55 (Winter 1992): 10; Stapleford, Cost of Living in America, 374–76; Lorie Konish, “These Costs Are Taking the Biggest Bite Out of Retirees’ Wallets,” at www.cnbc.com/2019/10/02/social-security-cost-of-living-adjustments-arent-covering-these-costs.html.

  51. 51.

    Stapleford, Cost of Living in America, 375; “CPI Changes Will Improve Inflation Measure,” Nation’s Business 71 (Feb. 1983): 6 (quotation).

  52. 52.

    Stapleford, Cost of Living in America, 376–77; David S. Johnson et al., “Price Measurement in the United States: A Decade after the Boskin Report,” Monthly Labor Review 129 (May 2006): 10–17.

  53. 53.

    Binyamin Applebaum, “Fed’s Forceful Voice on Inflation a Possible Bernanke Successor,” NYT, Apr. 24, 2013, A1, B4; “Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy,” Annual Report of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2012), at https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/117/item2471/toc/251009, accessed Mar. 27, 2019.

  54. 54.

    Applebaum, “Fed’s Forceful Voice on Inflation,” B2; Paul Krugman, “Oligarchs and Money,” NYT, Apr. 7, 2014, A23; Binyamin Applebaum, “Issue for Fed: Is a 2% Inflation Rate High Enough?” New York Times, Apr. 29, 2015, B4; Williamson, “Annual Inflation Rates.”

  55. 55.

    Applebaum, “Issue for Fed,” B4 (quotation).

  56. 56.

    Erik Sherman, “Inflation Is at Historic Lows, So Why Do Things Seem So Expensive?” Fortune, Feb. 13, 2020, https://fortune.com/2020/02/13/personal-inflation-rate-cpi-why-is-college-health-care-so-expensive/, accessed Feb. 14, 2020; Annie Lowrey, “The Great Affordability Crisis Breaking America,” Atlantic, Feb. 7, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/great-affordability-crisis-breaking-america/606046, accessed Feb. 9, 2020; BLS, CPI for All Urban Consumers, https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost, accessed Apr. 4, 2020; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Disposable Personal Income Per Capita [A229RCO], from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RCO, Apr. 5, 2020; U.S. Census Bureau, Median Household Income in the United States [MEHOINUS646N], from FRED . . ., https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUS646N, Apr. 5, 2020.

  57. 57.

    Sherman, “Inflation Is at Historic Lows”; BLS, CPI for All Urban Consumers.

  58. 58.

    BLS, CPI for All Urban Consumers; Lowrey, “Great Affordability Crisis” (quotation).

  59. 59.

    Tim Henderson, “Rural America Faces a Housing Cost Crunch,” Stateline Article, Mar. 25, 2019, at https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2019/03/25/rural-america-faces-a-housing-cost-crunch, accessed Apr. 7, 2020; BLS, CPI for All Urban Consumers; Alisha Coleman-Jensen et al., Household Food Security in the United States in 2018, Economic Research Report 270 (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Sept. 2019), 6.

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    David I. Macleod

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Macleod, D.I. (2024). Epilogue: 1920s to Present. In: Inflation Decade, 1910—1920. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55393-6_17

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