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Show WITH WHOM WOULD YOU CAST YOUR LOT? Ono lost of a country's economic pattern is whetker you would like to live lliere. The advantages of the social scene, in otlior words, make up its strongest advertisement. It is common scandal, naturally, that none of our American Amer-ican travelers cherish the idea of actually living in Russia. Apparently, from a personal viewpoint, they II take American Amer-ican living any day. On that point, these Communists and Russophobes show good judgment. A Russian factory worker, under the new Russian prices, has to spend the income of one hour and 18 minutes of labor for a quart of milk, which the average American factory worker gets in exchange for the price of 10 minutes labor. A pound of butter costs the Russian Rus-sian 10 hours and 42 minutes; the American only A8V2 minutes (not counting the time spent griping about the current cur-rent price) . It costs the Russian factory worker about four weeks work to gel himself a part-wool suit. If he wants a worsted suit he'll have to spend his entire pay for. more than three months. His American counterpart can work out a good quality worsted suit in little more than three days. More than two weeks' pay would have to go into a pair of leather shoes for the Russian, yet the American can work them out in less than a day. These comparisons are based upon estimates of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and on Russian prices as reported by the Associated Press in December. The comparisons are as accurate as the iron curtain will permit. They show that prices in a communistic economy are much higher than our own. in terms of work. And those are the terms that count. The real payoff of any economic system comes in the standard of living that it provides for its people. Without question, the American workingman enjoys the highest living liv-ing standards of any nation. He's rightly proud of this, although al-though he may not know the United States has 54 per cent of the world's telephones, 84 per cent of the automobiles, nearly 50 per cent of the radios, and 92 per cent of all the bathtubs. Our country, contrary to Russian descriptions, is a nation where men are permitted to have a high standard of living. Here, men are free to work, to invent, to initiate, to experiment, to engage in the enterprise of their dreams. Unhampered Un-hampered by restrictions to keep down any individual enterprise, enter-prise, an American worker can start his own factory or set up his own business. We take all these things for granted, along with our vastly superior standard of living. What we must assuredly assured-ly know is this: these things we have, these privileges of ours, exist because of basic principles that belong to the American way. Our individual freedom of enterprise is distinctly American. No Communistic or socialistic state can offer that to its people. "I'll raise him in the White House for the President." Presidential Physician Graham, re. puppy presented to Tru-mans. |