SINCE the end of World War II, almost every major nation in Western Europe has experimented with some form of direct government intervention to keep wage and price increases within the limits of economic stability. In the United States, the Kennedy-Johnson Administration took the first step in this direction by launching a program of “wage guidelines” in 1962-66. Although the effectiveness of this effort was (and is) still the subject of controversy, the Nixon Administration, on August 15, 1971, went the whole way and instituted a comprehensive program of direct controls on wages and prices.