sanitation workers, teachers senior citizens, rich man, poor manyou name it.verybody faces higher prices and thinks, "i'm being ruined." this perception that everyone is losing is unjustified. if prices are going up incomes are going up, too. not everybody is losing all the time. still, when this uncertainty about the future becomes contagious things can get bad for everybody. it's difficult running an efficient, productive economy when prices change all the time. but whether justified or not this fear of falling behind can be a major factor causing inflation to increase. sanitation workers feel they're falling behind. they strike, getting higher wages. now other public employees see they're behind. they demand even higher increases. now coal miners, assembly line workers, sales clerks see they're falling behind. up we go. wages, prices, wages, prices. the spiral is upon us. how on earth can it be stopped? by the end of the 1960s, the question wasn't only real, but urgent. president johnson shrugged off the importance of inflation. but by early 1969, when the