Business: America the Inefficient

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persuaded the movers to list the packers' labels, one of which was "basement, attic and garage junk." At 3:40 a.m. on Saturday, the boss announced that his van was fully loaded and that she would have to get a second van—from where, he did not know or care. In desperation, Mrs. McCulloch phoned the moving company's offices in Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. No one answered. By midmorning she reached the Chicago office, which arranged to send a second van. After Mrs. McCulloch arrived at her new home, she watched as the movers knocked much of the paint off her freshly decorated hall and kitchen while lugging in appliances. She is now trying to find pieces from various boxes. One box labeled "garage-attic-basement misc." contains nothing of the sort; it holds sheets and a crushed lampshade. Mrs. McCulloch does not intend to respond to a card from the company asking for comments on the move.

>Herschel Elkins, a California deputy attorney general, sees a spectrum of frustration in the numerous consumer protests that he receives about auto repairs, car-sales practices and warranties. From the 27,000 protests about faulty auto repair that came in last year, Elkins picks out the case of a Mexican-American laborer who bought an old car for $100. In the next 60 days he was victimized by garagemen who were as efficient at stripping him of money as they were inefficient at fixing his car. The laborer was almost inexcusably naive. He spent $750 for repairs and parts, including a different engine and two separate transmissions. After all that, the car would go no faster than 30 m.p.h.; the owner got one traffic ticket for driving too slowly on a freeway and another because the car was smoking. And because he took too much time off from his job to fuss with the jalopy, he was fired.

>Mrs. Peggy Loewe had a wonderful trip—until the plane touched down in the U.S. The flight landed right on time, but there was a 45-minute wait for a parking ramp at Kennedy Airport. After trying in vain to hail a taxi (said a policeman: "Ya gotta be aggressive here, lady"), she boarded the crowded airport bus for a jostling ride to Manhattan's East Side Airlines Terminal, which is located away from almost everything. She waited in a long line for a taxi, then shared it with three strangers (all of whom paid full fare). At Grand Central Station, she learned that her commuter train was indefinitely delayed. An hour's wait—and then she boarded a train. It did not budge. Another 30-minute wait; the passengers were off-loaded and put onto another train. It wheezed out of the station, only to stall several times along the way. Mrs. Loewe had flown from West Germany to the U.S. in 7½ hours. Her journey from Kennedy Airport to her home in New York's Westchester County—30 miles, as the crow flies —took five hours.

For the sake of efficiency, U.S. citizens have long been willing to give up many of the amenities of life that are common in less complex and slower-paced societies: clean cities, open space, the chance for an afternoon siesta. Until recently, most felt satisfied with the bargain. But now that the U.S. industrial and social system is delivering such "disproducts" as pollution and racial tension and no longer seems to be supplying the compensating efficiency, many Americans feel they have