Domestic Economic Problems Research Articles

The Nuclear Deterrent and the British Election of 1964

There was little reason to have expected Britain's international policies to be of major concern to most voters in casting their ballots in the 1964 General Election. Party disagreement over entering the European Economic Community was at least temporarily in abeyance after de Gaulle's veto. No great imperial question remained to divide Conservatives from the Labour or Liberal Parties. Membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was firmly bipartisan (or tripartisan). Moreover, British power was now so limited, in relation to the rest of the world, as to provide little basis for Englishmen to think that their nation could make important international decisions. At the same time, there were domestic economic problems about which, it was widely thought, a British government could and should do something. In short, every likelihood existed for electoral attention to be fixed almost entirely on domestic affairs. This would hardly have been unusual. Democratic elections ordinarily seem so conducted. Even if it were clearly desirable to have sharp partisan disagreement over a substantive international question, it is doubtful whether genuine alternatives often exist except perhaps for the super-powers.It is surprising, then, to find that a question of international policy was contested in the British General Election of 1964. The question was whether Britain should continue trying to have an independent nuclear deterrent. Labour (and the Liberals) proposed that the effort be abandoned. The governing Conservative Party was committed to its continuation. These divergent party policies did not, it is true, make the deterrent issue overwhelmingly important in the electoral decision.

Economic Alternatives to Arms Prosperity

Conversion to civilian economy can be carried out efficiently if there is detailed planning at all levels: factory, firm, industry, state, and federal. The main opportunities for new domestic civilian markets are in economic development investment in the underdeveloped regions of the United States and in major expenditures for health, education, housing, and related services. Large foreign markets for capital goods await major United States investment in economic development. Pressures for solving market and conversion problems are being generated not only by prospects of disarmament but also by two new factors: domestic economic problems that press for solution and require a shift of resources from military uses and the appreciation that it makes no military or other sense to spend more for expensive overkill stock-piling.

Federal Versus State Jurisdiction Over Power Development and Its Supervision

THE question of the development and distribution of electric power is fast becoming one of the most important of our domestic economic problems, second only to that of transportation. The lighting of our homes and streets, and the operation of our industries, our local transportation systems, and to a constantly increasing degree our main line railroads are dependent upon the production, transmission and distribution of electric energy. The volume of electric energy produced and used is increasing with extreme rapidity. A business which is so rapidly expanding creates a host of new questions respecting its management and regulation that demand consideration, if it is to develop with a due regard to the public interest. Supervision or regulation of power development may be directed to one or both of two phases or stages of the problem: to the physical side, such as the plans of development and the construction and operation of the plant; or to the business side, such as the production, transmission, distribution and sale of the product, and to the financing of the undertaking. For the purposes of this discussion the exercise of governmental control over the physical elements will be called supervision, and over the business elements, regulation. With respect to the physical side, the state and Federal governments have points of contact only where water-power development is involved; for the Federal Government assumes