Numbers Game

It is a poor U.S. economic pundit who has not his own estimate of what the postwar national income and employment rate should be for prosperity.

Last week the latest guesser, John Lee Coulter (longtime tariff expert representing the conservative Committee of Americans), declared that he would be satisfied with a yearly national income of $110,000,000,000, and a good round job figure of 55,000,000. (The President has insisted on 60,000,000 postwar jobs.)

Other guessers:

P:Commerce Secretary Henry A. Wallace: $170,000,000,000; 60 million jobs.

P:General Motors' scholarly Economist Rufus Stickney Tucker: $125,000,000,000; 53.5 million jobs.

P:Economic Planner Beardsley Ruml: $140,000,000,000; 55 million jobs.

P:Federal Reserve Board Economist Emanuel Alexander Goldenweiser: $140,000,000,000; 60 million jobs.

P:C.I.O.'s best guess: income $200,000,000,000; jobs, 60 million.

Added up and divided by six, all such earnest peeping into the future last week produced this average guesstimate: postwar U.S. income, $147,500,000,000 a year; postwar jobs, 57,250,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.