On October 6, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and William L. Safire met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 9:23 pm to 9:31 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 285-004 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Bill, what, uh, I think of the business and the profits and so forth, but it concerns me.
Is there a way to read through our changes and start a relationship with the fall business and the fall profits, even though we refer to them as the fall profits?
Page six, page seven, page seven.
I read that the way you could do it is in one way or another to say,
The better way is to make sure that the business passes along a fair share of its cost savings to the consumer.
You see, that's a very general thing.
I don't want to put that in that way.
It is to say that we're a business.
We're a business.
As a result of a, of a, of a,
Wages are of a free company.
It's a result of wage restraint.
It's an exorbitant process.
That vector will pass along a fair share of its cost to the consumer.
See what I mean?
And then we go into all this later, and it looks like we're going to look at prophets of all days, and just along the price range, and we're going to write some cases that might generate acceptance of any prophecy.
And just to provide that we're aware, we're aware of the result of...
You say that make certain the business does the long and fair share of its cost savings to the consumer and its public broad.
I mean, I'm just afraid it's kind of given up.
Instead of a hundred lines, it's a billion lines.
One thing is... Is that new?
No, but that isn't quite...
I mean, you're not even talking about the next two years.
cost savings and so forth.
And how you're going to do it makes you look like you're going to have an excess profits tax, if you want to say that.
For business to pass along.
Well, I think you better, on that point, just have March type up to there, see?
And then, in the morning, you check with Conway and Schultz and see what you can do.
I just don't want something here that's going to chill the hell out of a business, you know, at this point.
I mean, we're not going to do it on a lot.
We're just going to do it on pure cognitive, pretty much cognitive.
We're not going to have that.
Yeah, that's right.
I know, but if you, I just don't want the Price Commission to look into the profits of all business and say this is too high, this is too low, and so on.
that'll get shocked in a lot of business.
You just gotta say, you know, practices are all generated by profit.
That's not good.
You could say, in such cases, you could say, in such cases, business should pass along a fair share of its cost savings to the consumer.
That's what you're doing.
It's not fair.
We won't let that happen.
In such cases, it should pass along a fair share of its cost savings to the consumer.
Got it?
In such cases, business should...
should pass along a fair share of its cost savings to the consumer.
We have lived too long with the psychology of some crash reduction psychology.
This is not only the public interest, but it makes good utility business sense.
It's also about windfall profits.
It's not about any other kind of profits.
That's right.
You said it.
You said it.
I don't like it at all, but if you put that much in, there's no more.
I guess everybody wanted to dance, you know.
It's, uh...
It commonly would have struck out completely.
Well, we... Well, this place has done quite a bit, you see.
We've reduced it, you know.
It's a little off, but...
It's really... Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, incidentally, on the mandatory controls, I want you to check that thing in the morning with Tommy.
Knock that out if you don't mind that.
I kind of like it myself.
Take that out.
i just don't think we need to demand it all right