Whip Inflation Now (WIN) was a 1974 attempt to spur agrassroots movement to combatinflation in the United States, by encouraging personal savings and disciplined spending habits in combination with public measures, urged byU.S. PresidentGerald Ford. The campaign was later described as "one of the biggest government public relations blunders ever".[2]
People who supported the mandatory and voluntary measures were encouraged to wear "WIN" buttons,[3] perhaps in hope of evoking in peacetime the kind of solidarity and voluntarism symbolized by theV-campaign duringWorld War II.
Ford took office in August 1974 amidst one of the worst economic crises in US history, marked by high unemployment and inflation rising to 12.3% that year following the1973 oil crisis.[2] As a Republican, Ford favored the WIN campaign's emphasis on addressing the problem through voluntary actions of citizens, instead ofprice controls imposed centrally by abig governmentbureaucracy.[2]
Ford launched the WIN campaign with war-like intensity in his address to the American people before Congress on October 8, 1974, declaring inflation "public enemy number one" in a speech entitled "Whip Inflation Now". He announced proposals for public and private anti-inflationary efforts across many sectors, includingcarpooling, reducing oil imports, one‐year tax increase for corporations, reduced thermostat use, home vegetable gardens, and retailers holding or reducing prices.[2] A new 18-member inflation fighting committee was led by journalistSylvia Porter and had varied members such asRalph Nader and Chamber of Commerce president Arch Boot.[4] As Ford exhorted the nation to begin a "massive mobilization" he wore a red button with "WIN" on his breast pocket, a word which "tells it all" because "win we will". Ford offered identical pins for citizens who enlisted by mail as "Inflation Fighters".[5][6] However, he had the only pin in existence at the time. Within a week, a slapdash group had been assembled, with employees pulled from various federal agencies, to manage the 80,000 pieces of mail, most of which were requests for WIN buttons.[7][8]
"WIN" buttons immediately became objects of ridicule. Retailers of "everything from used cars to pizza" quickly used the inflation message as a gimmick to drive sales, which encouraged increased consumer spending behavior instead of curbing it.[9] AMcDonald's radio ad depicted a dad describing inflation followed by an announcer declaring a 50-cent kids’ special with a hamburger, fries, and a soft drink. When the dad asks "Well, son, how do’ you like fighting inflation?" he replies "It tastes good."[9] Skeptics wore the buttons upside down to make them say "NIM", and joked it stood for "Nonstop Inflation Merry-go-round," or "Need Immediate Money."
By March 10,Sylvia Porter announced the program would be halted and that ultimately WIN had lost.[10] Media memorialized as "one of the great fizzles of American history".[11]
Alan Greenspan, as the Chairman of theCouncil of Economic Advisors during the Ford administration, went along reluctantly with the "Whip Inflation Now" campaign,[2] but would later recall in his bookThe Age of Turbulence that he was thinking, "This is unbelievably stupid" when the concept was first presented to theWhite House. According to historian Yanek Mieczkowski, the public campaign was never meant to be the centerpiece of the anti-inflation program.[12]
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