فقر و گرانی در دوره محمدرضا شاه

For example, a report published by the London Economist in 1976 estimated that rents in residential parts of Tehran rose 300 percent in five years, and that by 1975 a middle class family could be spending for housing as much as 50 percent of its annual income. A complex combination of factors caused this inflation: the lack of housing and influx of over 60,000 well-paid foreign technicians; the failure of agricultural production to keep up with the rising popu lation; the sudden jump in food prices on the world markets; the crash industrialization program and the continued growth in the military establishment, which created labor shortages, raised wages in the rural sector, drained labor from the rural sector, and thus further aggravated the agricultural problem; and, most important of all, the ov erheating of the economy once the oil billions were poured into am bitious development projects in 1974-1975 the government tripled its development investments and increased the money supply by over 60 percent. When economists warned of the dangers of overheating, the shah declared that statesmen should never listen to economists.

Yervand Abrahamian