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Show William Safire Social Security Still Taboo Topic New York Times Service The burning issue of the 1982 election, which has been designated as too hot for candidates to discuss, is this: Shall we keep Social Security solvent by raising payroll taxes or by limiting future increases in benefits? Whenever political figures dare to approach this taboo sub-- i ject, they are excoriated by savants for foolishly enter-inthe system European Steel Pact Requires Effort by U.S. Producers At a time when the American steel industry is facing unusual challenges from a variety of sources, any form of relief has to be welcomed. Thus the agreement worked out with the European Common Market on tough restraints on imports of European steel is a timely assist for this basic industry. By extension, it should also be seen as a boon for the American economy as a whole. American steel makers have long, and with justification, complained that European governments provided subsidies that enabled their producers to sell steel products at a lower price in the United States and elsewhere. than those addressed by the straints. re- The agreement with the European Common Market and future accords that will presumably be negotiated with other foreign producers, carry the danger of creating an international cartel in steel in which various nations split up the world market and set prices accordingly. Close scrutiny of developments in the wake of the agreement will be necessary to detect emergence of any such pattern. Whether the quotas agreement proves to be the godsend domestic steelmakers and the White House seem to think it is may depend as The agreements announced much, or more, on factors which Thursday by President Reagan are not even addressed by the are calculated to eliminate that pact. American steel makers still practice. Will other U.S. indus- must contend with high labor tries, such as aircraft manufacturcosts, old plants, environmental ers, now request similar relief requirements and restrictions and from foreign government subsidy tax structures which may or may pressures? not burden the foreign competitors Restraints on trade, whether against whom they still must labeled import quotas or tariffs or compete elsewhere in the world. A wise and caring government complicated licensing regulations or whatever are still restraints on should help nourish and defend a trade. And such restraints can basic industry such as steel. But reduce or even eliminate competi- the industry has an equal responsition and cost the consumer. They bility to merit that attention by can also serve as an artificial producing in the most efficient bulwark against the realities of a manner possible and not relying on changing world, keeping alive a benevolent governments patronindustries that have lost their age for its continued existence in a competitive edge for reasons other dog eat dog world. Gift of Understanding million gift to the Russian Institute at Columbia University by W. Averell Harriman and his family is the kind of important happening that normally doesnt make big headlines. And, beyond New York City, it An $11.5 didnt. We are noting' it here on a recent swing through because Eastern at the were we alarmed Europe of misunderstanding great gulf about the United States that exists in that Soviet dominated part of the world. And we also realized that there is much ignorance of Eastern Europe among people in the United States. The Harriman gift is supposed to reduce the degree of American Orbiting Paragraphs Reversing the cash flow is like trving to make water run uphill. Why is it that the slowest grocery carts always stick to the middle of the aisle? People who insist on banning a book should first be required to read it. It would be nice to have a boss who knows without being told that balancing your budget requires an increase in revenues. misunderstanding concerning the Soviet Union, a problem of potentially greater impact than any other information void among the worlds peoples with the exception of Soviet misconceptions about America. It is absolutely essential that this country know what is going on in the Soviet Union, Mr. Harriman said in announcing the gift to promote American studies of that country. Since language barriers and the Soviet Unions official penchant for secrecy makes it difficult for the average American to learn about life there, it is necessary to train specialists who can probe Soviet society and spread the word. In an age of instant communication and easy travel it is remarkable the amount of confusion and plain falsehoods about other countries that persists. The Harriman donation was not unexpected from a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and a man whose devotion to furthering better world conditions is well established. It would be doubly valuable if it inspires others of like means to take up the same important cause. take-hom- pay to make life easier for e gramps. So why are both parties and the press in elitist collusion to hush up this natural argument? Why not put candidates on the spot? The next time your hand is grabbed by a candidate, ask the unaskable: Do you favor g a minefield. In political Washington, when Sen, John Glenn ventured to wonder aloud about Social Security to a group of pundits, he was mocked for his lack of astuteness. In Californias senatorial race, when Pete Wilson began to question the effect of the present system on the younger generation of workers, he was pounced upon by Jerry Brown as if the Republican to the were a ravisher of retirees amusement of those commentators who have come to admire the art of ducking issues. Instead of interrogating all candidates vigorously on this most sensitive issue, we seem to smirk at any candidate so foolhardy as to discuss the most significant social legislation before the next Congress. That is largely because this most political of subjects has been placed outside the arena of politics by the appointment of a bipartisan Social Security Reform Commis sion, which will not reveal its recommendations until after election day. In effect, American voters have been told they are too emotional to consider positions on such a controversy before electing their leaders. Everybody is for reform," which means nothing. The question is who shall pay for what reforms. One reason this is being evaded is that nobody wants to acknowledge a conflict of interest between generations. Our younger workers may not be pleased to discover, in years to come, that they were left out of the process of deciding that they had been chosen to bear the burden of support for todays middle-age- d workers. Here is the mix being prepared by the n commission, unencumbered by public debate 1. Raise the retirement age from the present 65 to 68, and deny benefits for earlier retirement. Cushion this by not making the change applicable for a decade or more. (Bad for the old, good for the young.) 2. Raise payroll taxes beyond the raises already mandated; within a decade, this would make these taxes, split between employer and worker, half again higher than they are today. (Good for the old, bad for the young.) Cushion this with a tax credit or deduction on the employees payroll tax increases, especially if you take the next step: 3. Make half of Social Security benefits subject to federal income tax. (Good for those who are penniless, a penalty for those who get interest from savings put aside for old age.) 4. Include all new federal, state and local government employees in the system. (Terrible for bureaucrats who prefer their own system.) 5. Tie escalators to either the Consumer Price Index or the wage-scal- e index, whichever is lower. (Less of a burden on the young, less good for the old.) Maybe this mix is a fine compromise, reducing the entitlement drain by tens of billions each year through a combination of tax increases and benefit limitations. (Nobody is talking about tax cuts or benefit cuts.) consensus is a Maybe the hoped-fo- r mistake. Many conservatives would say that the notion of raising payroll taxes increases built beyond the already-too-hig- h into the law contributes to inflation and unemployment, and shifts the burden of carrying the elderly too much to the gypped generation not now being consulted. Liberals would argue the opposite: Taxing the young is the right way to provide a decent life for older Americans. Reduce the retirement age, open opportunities for people on the way up. Give the elderly the most inflation protection, not the least. Labor holds that workers of all ages benefit from no dependency of parents. There is a legitimate argument here that adds the age dimension to the standard codgers ordilineups. Right-win- g narily against government spending are all for taxing young workers to provide for g students liberal benefit increases; in love with the welfare state may not be so eager to fork over 10 percent of their Avvo blue-ribbo- cost-of-livi- left-rig- left-win- (P WASHINGTON Tuesday afternoon, during a commercial break in a radio interview with a rabbi, a colleague passed me a clipping of yet another story on the Tylenol murders. It was about one James W. Lewis (an abas) whose fingerprints had been found on the extortion letter and who appeared to be the man in the grainy photograph where Paula Prince is seen buying the poisoned, fatal bottle of pills. The 12th paragraph read thus: "In 1978, Mr. Lewis was charged with murder in the slaying of Raymond West, a Kansas City man "r' Buchanan who had hired Mr. Lewis as an accountant. Mr. Wests dismembered and decomposed body was found hanging from a pulley in his attic the same day Mr. Lewis tried to cash a forged cheek on his account. The case was dismissed when the judge found that the police did not inform Mr. Lew is of his rights at the time of his arrest " k mm m md pointed out the paragraph to the rabbi. " I his is sickness," he said three times not of the murders, but that America routinely releases vicious and dangerous men on technicalities. Those who are merciful toward the cruel," he quoted the Talmud, "are destined to be cruel toward the merciful. The rabbi was Meier Kahane, and this time he was right. "A pattern of fraud and extortion is not new for Mr. Lewis, the attorney general of Illinois was quoted in the same article. "They (Lewis and wife) could be responsible for the Tylenol murders. Well, if so, then the murder of Paula Prince and six others should be laid directly to the final uccount of the Warren Court and to Earl Warren, Bill Douglas, Thurgood Marshall and Bill Brennan in particular. When all the definitive biographies are written of these great "progressives, at each of the testimonials to the Warren Court, we should recall Paula Prince and the other innocent victims, running probably now in the hundreds if not the thousands, of the Miranda Decision these justices handed down in 1966. Years ago, it was a rarity that a man walked free because the constable erred. Now it is commonplace In Maryland, one James McClain was recently convicted of hurling a trash chute. After infant down an he confessed to the crime, he got life. Last year, the Maryland Court of Appeals turned McClain loose because he had not been taken before a court commissioner until 12 minutes after the allotted 24 hours after his arrest. three In California, a killer confessed off the record was turned loose because the California Supreme Court declared an "off the record confession was inadmissible. Even the killers attorney expressed astonishment when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the California decision. (Ten years ago, a man who admitted clubbing to death his grandmother, sister and mother in Pennsylvania was released because the officer giving him his Miranda warning told him anything he said could be used "for or against him. The court held that including the for vitiated the confession.) In recent years, too many Americans have accorded the decisions of the U.S. deferSupreme Court a tug-o- f ence, underserved on their merits. To love one's country, Burke said, ones country ought be lovely. Well, to respect the of who .s Hobart Rowen Protectionism Now Goes A Step Backwards The Washington Post - Although the Democrats can make a strong case that President Reagan has messed up the economy, Reagan can make a strong case that the Democrats are not putting together a convincing alternWASHINGTON ative economic program. Instead, what comes through from key spokesmen is an appeal to the protectionist instincts of those thrown out of work by the deep recession. Thus, Sen. Donald Riegle, responding to President Reagans address on the economy last week, had at the top of his list an effort to win what he described as an international trade war. A Michigan senators angst in the middle of an auto depression is perhaps understandable. What is more worrisome is that two major Democratic presidential candidates, Walter P. Mondale and Ted Kend scramble to nail nedy, in a down the AFL-CIendorsement, are making the same kind of noises. Mondale is going around the country calling for a policy with the Japanese. "We have to stop showing that white flag, to start running up the American flag, and to turn around, fight, and make America No. 1 again in international commerce so that American jobs are filled in this country," Mondale told the United Steelworkers in Atlantic City, N.J., Sept. 22. "If we dont get cracking, get serious, and head-to-hea- get-toug- h High Court Rulings Victimizing Many Americans I 9&Z Weve got to hide em someplace. n Patrick J. Buchanan PJB Enterprises tax increases or benefit limitation to pay for Social Security? If he takes the position you like, vote for him. If he ducks the subject, giving you the usual mush about waiting for somebody elses recommendations for reform, grab your hand back. We dont need more wimps in Congress. (Copyright) decisions of the high court, those decisions ought at the least to be respectable. On issue after issue they are not. From outlawing school prayer to extending the First Amendment freedom of the press to smut peddlers, from discovering the right to an abortion lurking in the Constitution to handing unscrupulous attorneys who are the tools to effect the release of guilty and dangerous men, decision after decision has been utterly undeserving of respect. In many ways; the American people are the innocent victims of a coup detat carried out by politicians in black robes elected by no one, who have read their own prejudices into constitutional law. Jefferson always averred that free men had the right to take up arms to overthrow an imposed tyranny. This society is today living under a rule imposed by the clammy, dead hand of the Warren Court whose heralded "revolution was saddled upon us with little more consent than Lenin enjoyed when fastening his revolution upon the Russian people. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers left peaceful weapons within the Constitution for the people to deal with a rogue Court. A free people worth the name ought not flinch from wielding a single one. (Copyright) get leadership . . . our kids will be cheated by us. Their jobs will consist of sweeping up around Japanese computers and spending a lifetime serving McDonald hamburgers. . Earlier, in somewhat less strident tones, Kennedy told the same union that, We must take whatever steps we must to see that Americans in the 1980s and 1990s will be buying American products made with American steel. The most blatant protectionist pitches get the loudest applause. But the problems in Pittsburgh and Detroit run deep: They wont be solved by waving the American flag. On the telephone from the Massachusetts campaign trail, Mondale denies that hes line. bought the John Connally He argues that stories on his new get tough speech (such as Martin Schrams in the Washington Post and a column by James B. Reston in The New York Times) are unfair because they convey an oversimplified impression. Jap-bashin- g Yes, Japan); weve got to get tougher (with dont take that back, Mondale I told me. But he claims a more rounded y position, advocating a switch in policy to induce lower interest rates so that the overvalued dollar which will come down. He also hurts exports fiscal-monetar- demands that the United States keep pace with other nations export subsidies which "cheat American companies and workers. He says that both European and Japanese multinational companies are much smarter than our own, because they keep the good jobs at home and leave the dead-en- d jobs for us and our kids. However you slice it, these ideas still emerge as protectionist baloney. "This is a transition from the position I would have taken 10 years ago, Mondale admits. "Im frustrated by the interminable nature of these (trade) negotiations (with Japan). We need access (to their markets). Weve got to get more than talk." It can't be denied that Japan has held onto import controls, now somewhat on but still frustrating loosened manufactured and agricultural goods. But getting tough on this issue is not going to take millions of American auto, steel, textile and other workers off the unemployment line. If that is to come about, it will happen only if there are basic changes here not in Tokyo in relations, and with the undergirding support of a general revival of the U.S. economy. One cant blink the existence of bitter sentiment among the workers in basic U.S. industries, where a combination of unionism and lousy management has allowed Japanese (and other foreign) competitors to get ahead. When politicians cater to that bitterness, they help fan a dangerous racialist trend. industry-union-governme- e d There are plenty of other alternatives to some conventional, some Reaganomics more radical begging for examination. But protectionism is the wrong way to go: By its old name or any new one that political candidates cook up for fiery speeches in union halls, protectionism will only lead us backwards into the 1950s. (Copyright) |