Business: A Search for Equity

AFTER taking their immediate bearings in President Nixon's new economic world, most of its inhabitants last week concentrated on studying the future. Both in the U.S. and abroad, those most directly affected by Nixon's sweeping economic policy prepared for councils that will debate for months what he announced to the world in a few minutes. Out of their discussions may emerge more permanent prescriptions for the plight of the dollar abroad and the blight of inflation at home than anyone-even a Presiden-could impose by any kind of personal fiat.

Phase 2. In the U.S., debate continued to center on what will happen during Phase 2, which will start after the present wage-price freeze ends on Nov. 13. Administration spokesmen, including Labor Secretary James Hodgson and Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, cautiously declined under questioning to rule out future controls on profits and dividends, which are not covered by the 90-day freeze. They had little choice but to do so, if only to avoid setting off another fit of temper by A.F.L.C.I.O. Boss George Meany, who adamantly insists that the Administration was unfair to working men and women by freezing wages but not profits. In his Labor Day message, Meany angrily declared that "the President's program does not meet the test of equity"which he defined as equal restraints ''on all costs and incomes."

The President, however, let it be known that he still opposes an excess-profits tax and then resumed campaigning in support of his measures. Returning from a 15-day stay at the Western White House, Nixon stopped off in Chicago to speak to the milk producers association and promised that his policy would usher in "a New Prosperity" -"without inflation and without war."

The search for equity preoccupied most of the experts who testified before Congress's Joint Economic Committee. Paul McCracken, chairman of Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers, hinted strongly at what has become a general assumption in Washington-that some form of wage and price restraint with "clout" and "punch" will be extended beyond the freeze. McCracken also predicted that the Nixon program would create some 500,000 new jobs -enough to reduce unemployment to about 5%. He said that the Administration expected Nixon's measures to add some $15 billion to the gross national product in 1972. More than half of that, McCracken said, would come from increased consumer spending.

In Detroit, John Z. DeLorean, head of G.M.'s Chevrolet Division, reflected the auto industry's exuberant belief that much of the added spending will be for new cars, which should be about $200 cheaper under Nixon's program. Chevrolet plans to have a record 200,000 new cars in showrooms when the 1972s go on sale Sept. 23.