The equally dangerous threat of inflation is building. Consumer prices reflecting the drought and last winter's cold weather have been going up at an… - Jimmy Carter

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The equally dangerous threat of inflation is building. Consumer prices reflecting the drought and last winter's cold weather have been going up at an annual rate of about 10 percent in the last 3 months, and the basic inflation rate, under everything else, has been running 6 or 6 1/2 percent. These inflation figures are too high for comfort. And as you know, also, inflation falls most heavily on people with modest means and people who've worked all their lives for a little security and who then find that security threatened. Inflation robs us of our confidence in the future. However, it's interesting to point out, at the recent London summit conference, the single issue of most concern to the seven heads of state assembled there was unemployment among young people. In the ideological struggle with the Eastern Socialist and Communist countries, this is our one major vulnerability. We have got to provide in our country an economic system that's healthy enough and an education system that's competent enough so that when our young people reach the age of 18 or 19 years old, they can find a way to use the talent and ability and opportunities that God gave them and not enter adult life discouraged and excluded from society. This ought to be number one in all our efforts in the future. Experience has shown us and all economists that we must attack inflation and unemployment together. To get our economy moving again, in the short 4 months that I've been in office, we proposed both direct creation of jobs and permanent tax reduction for the low-income and middle-income taxpayers. Last week I signed a bill, public works, which will provide both necessary community improvements where you live, plus about 600,000 jobs concentrated in areas of high unemployment. We have proposed more than doubling the existing jobs program for the long-term unemployed and the young. And Congress has already appropriated the money that we requested to increase public service jobs from 310,000 to 725,000. I've also proposed--and I believe the Congress will rapidly approve--a major initiative to train our young people and to put them to work in productive jobs in our cities, rural areas, national parks and forests. And in addition to this, above and beyond what I've just described, we will provide work this summer for about 1.1 million young people, more than ever before.