The People's Dollar

Retail sales in the U.S. last year hit the highest dollar mark on record: $63.3 billion, 10% above 1942, 64% above the 1935-39 average. But, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported, on a volume basis the $55.6 billion of retail business done in 1941 still represents the high-water mark. (In 1941 the cost of living was 18.3% below the 1943 average.) Based on what 1935-39 dollars would buy now, last year's retail bonanza was only 23.2% higher than the 1935-39 average.

Most extraordinary thing about last year's retail sales is that they were no higher. According to another Commerce Department study last week, total income payments to the U.S. people zoomed in 1943 to almost $142 billion, more than twice 1939's. December's $13.5 billion (at the staggering annual rate of $161.5 billion) represented the largest flow of cash into consumers' hands of any month in U.S. history. That this unprecedented income flow did not automatically produce an unprecedented price inflation--i.e., a much higher dollar volume of retail sales --once again proved that the people can still sometimes outsmart the economists.

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