POLICY: Carter's Stand: Democratic Orthodoxy

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Carter further would have the Government itself hire some people for public-service jobs−presumably meaning work in parks, drug-rehabilitation clinics and the like−and launch a program to create 800,000 summer jobs for youths. But he flatly opposes the idea that the Government should guarantee everyone a job through hiring for public-service employment. Though Carter has endorsed the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill. which calls for just such Government hiring, it is a ritualistic blessing only. Says his chief economic adviser, Lawrence R. Klein: "This bill could become an albatross. But no bill goes through Congress without amendments, and I can envision ten amendments that would make this a good bill."

PRICES. Carter believes that the inflation rate over the long run can be pushed down to about 3% a year, even as unemployment also declines. Pumping out more money to create jobs will not speed up inflation, he says, "because our economy is presently performing so far under capacity." The double-digit inflation of 1973-74, he says, was caused largely by a series of shocks that are not likely to be repeated: the quintupling of oil prices that followed the Arab embargo, frantic worldwide bidding for scarce commodities, two devaluations of the dollar.

Nonetheless, Carter's advisers do worry that inflation will speed up again as unemployment falls below 5%. To keep prices down, Carter advocates a hatful of standard Democratic remedies: some undefined programs to improve labor productivity and the abolition of Government regulatory restrictions that keep prices high, such as a present rule that forces many trucks to return from hauls empty. Finally, Carter says he will ask for standby authority to impose wage-price controls, but thinks he will "never" have to use it. Instead he proposes that the Government "effectively monitor excessive price and wage increases in specific sectors of the economy"−apparently implying a type of jawboning exhortation familiar from the Kennedy and Johnson years.

TAXES. In one of his few flights of angry rhetoric, Carter calls the present loophole-ridden federal tax code "a disgrace to the human race." He pledges to recommend a total overhaul, scrapping scores of deductions and exemptions in return for generally lower rates.

To work out the details of a tax overhaul, Carter says, will take a full year after he enters the White House. But he has given some startling glimpses of specifics. He once mentioned the deduction for interest on home mortgages as one that he might recommend dropping, though he lately has shied away from the subject. And he believes it is unfair to tax corporate profits and then tax the dividends paid out of those profits−so he would either knock out all taxes on dividend income or stop taxing the portion of corporate profits that is paid out in dividends to shareholders.