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Show Evaluate Opposite Approaches To Social Security Rescue Early in the Reagan presidency, d attention was focused on the Social Secuirty system. But more urgent matters like budget cutting and tax relief pushed the retirement programs troubles into the legislative shadows. With Congress returning to action this week and President Reagan back at the White House after a month-lon- g vacation, Social Security will soon be hard-presse- in the limelight again. As an indication of what can be expected, Rep. accused Claude D. Pepper, the Reagan administration of suppressing a Department of Labor retirement study because it did not support the presidents early recommendations for reducing Social Security benefits. The Pepper charge underlines two basically different approaches to the same goal of providing a sound Social Security system. The Reagan method relies heavily on cutting retiree benefits whereas Rep. Pepper, and most retirees, favor a positive plan that would induce workers to stay on the job longer, thereby reducing the need for making retirement payments and also continuing worker contributions to the Social Security trust funds. The Labor Department study referred to by the Florida congressman reportedly found that Social Security would benefit more from raising the mandatory retirement age to 70 in most cases or eliminating it altogeh-te- r than from reducing benefits for D-Fl- a., early retirees as Mr. Reagan once advocated. As part of his initial Social Sec- urity recommendations, the president last May proposed cutting benefits for those who elected to retire at 62 from 80 to 55 percent of the amount available at 65. This, he said, would strongly encourage workers to remain in the work force until 65. But the Labor Department study found that the same end could be better accomplished without elimination of mandatory retirement would have but negligible impact on depriving young people, women or minority groups of jobs. The report was, according to Rep. Pepper, available seven months ago but not made public because the administration was set on reducing benefits as the only way to shore up Social Security. Whether there is any basis for the Pepper charges, the fact remains that apparently sound alternatives to the benefits reduction strategy are available. And, if other options exist in this one instance, there is a strong likelihood they can be identified in other areas of the administrations proposals for Social Security would be needed, James Burger, a d Washington, attorney repMoab told CAB hearing resenting D.C.-base- officers. That assumes the operation of one plane with a single pilot carrying an average of 3.75 passengers for each leg of two round trips daily between Salt Lake City and Moab. Responding to CAB questions concerning a reasonable fare, the opinions offered ranged from $80 to $60, one-wa- y. Using those numbers means there would have to be a minimum of 5,475 persons annually who would fly between Moab and Salt Lake City. And they would, at the $80 one-wa- y fare, have to pay an annual total of $438,000 to make the flight. Initially, if the $100,000 CAB subsidy were forthcoming, the cost of a y trip between the two cities would be $98.26. Or about 42 cents a one-wa- mile. There is a limit to what people will pay for a $15,000 house. . .this year its Jos-- e $62,500. hh tor Wff punish- ing those who, for reasons of their own, want to take early retirement. According to the report, barring mandatory retirement at any age would add 195,000 people 60 to 70 years old to the work force. Further, Want to Try Again Frontier Airlines tried it, and couldnt make it. Then came Sun Valley Key Airlines, and suffered similarly. Next was Transwestem Airlines; same thing. Since the late 1950s various airlines, from the then federally subsidized regional carrier, Frontier, to two different commuter lines, have all attempted to provide scheduled air passenger service to Moab. The efforts have been failures. There just hasnt been enough passenger traffic to make the service profitable. Now people in that sparsely populated part of southeastern Utah (1.8 persons per square mile in Grand and San Juan counties) have asked the Civil Aeronautics Board for a subsidy to help sustain scheduled air passenger service to Moab from Salt Lake City. About $100,000 annually mi At that rate, apparently, a scheduled air passenger operation would be profitable. However, the question for the CAB to ponder is whether an area with a population of 20,582 (Grand and San Juan counties) will produce a daily average of 15 persons who want or need to fly between Moab and Salt Lake City. If recent history is any reliable guide, and the projections produced at the latest CAB hearing in Moab are valid, the chance of establishing an economically viable passenger service between Moab and Salt Lake City doesnt seem very bright. Douglas Watson Iranian Mayhem is Certain to Continue The Baltimore Sun JERUSALEM In any normal country, the government would be expected to fall after seeing i s president be dismissed and then flee into exile, the speaker of parliament and 73 others killed by a bomb blast, scores of lesser figures assassinated, and then both the new president and prime minister killed in another bombing. But Iran is hardly a normal country. So, despite all of those recent events and the execution of 600 to 800 opponents of the regime in only the past two months, chances are the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his Islamic Republican Party will continue in power for the immediate future. The however, is also likely to continue. For, despite the executions of many of its members, the underground Mujahedeen Khalq, the main leftist opposition group, has shown that it is still capable of striking back hard against the ruling mullahs. near-anarch- y, Chanting of the Masses Despite all its failures not only to improve the economic opportunities of the ordinary Iranian but to end the reign of terror also felt under the shahs rule, the Islamic government was still able to mass 1 million mourners to parade with the bodies of President Mohammed Ali Rajai and Premier Mohammed Javad Bahonar, both of whom had been in office less than a month. Unswerving religious faith can be a great thing, but it also can bring on a kind of blindness that can keep the masses chanting slogans of support while ignoring all of a regimes failures and bloody excesses. The main reason why Ayatollah Khomeini and company are likely to remain on top, at least through this year, which is about as far as a prudent person would want to predict, is that there now appears no force strong enough to oust them. TTie Mujahedeen, as determined as it is to use terror tactics to fight the Islam.e regime, has shown that it lacks the numbers to take on the Revolutionary Guards in open clashes in Tehrans streets. In most countries, the armed forces would have moved by now, as they did in Turkey last year, to put an end to the chaos. But Irans officer corps was purged following the shahs fall and the army has yet to regain its formerly powerful position. Besides, it may be bogged down for years in the static war with Iraq. More moderate elements, the many businessmen and middle-clas- s people who supported former prime ministers Shahpour Bakhtiar (now in exile) orMehdi Bazargain, never had the stomach for the kind of street violence it took the Islamic forces to win power in Iran; they are more intimidated than ever. Position of Communists Irans Tudeh or Communist Party has chosen to play a waiting game, allying itself with the Islamic regime, though their principles are almost entirely in conflict. This is perhaps an indication that the Soviet Union is not all that displeased by the government in Iran. t, but it is The regime many not be and so ineffective as to very give the Communists hope of eventually being able to come in and pick up all the Iranian marbles. The appointment and confirmation of Ayatollah Mohammed Reza Mahdavi Kani as prime minister is instructive. In his former job as interior minister, security had been Ayatollah Mahdavi Kanis concern. And security more than ever now is the Islamic regimes concern. It is not only a very brutal government, it has become a very frightened one, making it even more brutal. Obviously, a fifth column has penetrated deeply within its ranks to have been able to plant a bomb killing the countrys two highest officials. All will be suspect now. pro-Sovie- Even with 1 million mourners marching, the Iranian regime realizes it has lost the support it once had of the majority of the people. Virtually all the middle and upper class were disenchanted from the start, but to their silent ranks have been added many laborers and peasants. And Irans many regional minorities, the Kurds being the most obvious, are also antagonistic toward the regime. Opposition Not United The opposition is not united, however, at least not in the way it was united by Ayatollah Khomeini, who was able to draw not just one, but several million marchers into the streets, enough people to paralyze the shahs regime. But Khomeini is still the countrys most magnetic figure, and successful moves to challenge the regime might not come until he leaves the scene, from natural or other causes. When he dies, the Islamic Republican Party could be split in the struggle for succession, giving the Mujahedeen and other leftist groups the opening they would have been waiting for. The armed forces, too, could then become involved in what could develop into a civil war. A major concern of the United States in such a circumstance would be that the Soviet Union not be allowed to send its forces into northern Iran on the pretext of helping one side, as it did during World War II, after which it only removed its soldiers from Iran after great U.S. pressure. Joan Beck Women Must Use Own Initiative To Receive Comparable Pay Chicago Tribune the chic shorthand for Comparable pay what is supposed to be the womens issue of the 1980s got only an ambivalent boost this week from a new report made by the National Research Council for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Even without the impact of the Reagan administrations pullback on affirmative action last week, the message is melancholy. After two decades of active feminism and 18 years of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women still make only 55 percent as much as white men, the report confirmed. By contrast, minority men have cut the pay differential to 72 percent, a 40 percent shrinkage. Black women have caught up in earnings with white women. But the disparty between the sexes continues unabated. The roots of the discrepancy are so imbedded in tradition, education, attitudes, economics, lifestyles, corporate structures and complex labor forces that even a successful push for comparable pay couldnt end the unfairness and carries the risk of nasty side effects, the report cautions. It is a stark fact that women are paid less than men even when studies eliminate all the possible mitigating factors such as work experience, tenure, hours, quality and amount of education, union membership, health, age and family responsibilities. Despite all the excuses, there remains, indisputably, a large component of sex discrimination in setting salaries. Women are discriminated against by being g channeled into occupations; the more women in a job category, the less it pays. Womens work pays about $4,000 less a year mens work, says the than comparable report. Men in jobs usually filled by women earn more than women. Women in occupations dominated by men are paid less than men. Even within integrated job categories, women are shifted to subgroups with lower incomes; for example, in retailing, men usually get to sell the appliances and home fumish- big-tick- ings. Firms that employ large numbers ot women have lower salary scales than those with a majority of male employees. Many employers expect women to pay for their own job training as nurses, secretaries, and teachers do, for example but are much more willing to train men. Using the excuse that women may not stay on the job long, they are more reluctant to give women opportunities and training to advance; when they fear turnover among male workers, however, they usually try to sweeten chances for promotion and push up pay. Even employers who try not to discriminate by sex usually do, says the report. Labor market forces which opponents of comparable pay cite as the only fair arbitrator of wages reflect decades of past sexual discrimination, job segregation, systematic exclusion of women from advanced education and top jobs and social forces that have lumped women into occupations. The federal requirement of equal pay for equal work has done little to reduce the sex disparity in earnings. Most women still hold jobs that arent precisely equal to those of men and so arent covered by federal rules, the courts have held (except for a sliver of exception in Gunther v. County of Washington). Thats why women have been pushing the equal pay for concept of comparable pay work of comparable value. It may not be as difficult as some employers fear to set numerical values on various kinds of jobs, no absolute comparable worth although standard is likely ever to exist, the report says. But it warns that if pushed to raise wages for women by comparable pay strategies, some employers might simply restructure womens jobs to make them less valuable. Rather than raise pay, companies may switch to less e means of production or shift operations to other countries or even abandon some production or services. merit Even so, comparable pay does consideration" as one technique to take the sex bias out of salaries, the report concludes. But essentially, the message is one thats echoing from Washington: Women are going to have to but guts, make it on their own on the job better education, drive, union support, assertiveness, networking, a realistic appreciation of their own abilities and with the eventual d attrition of an old generation of employers. low-payi- labor-intensiv- sex-biase- pli Kraft Economy Darkens, But Reagan Is in Best Position to Slash Budget Los Angeles Times Syndicate WASHINGTON tops everybodys agenda as Washington returns to work after the August break. But the president and his Republican followers are far better positioned to wield the ax than the Democrats. So, though economic difficulties cast a shadow, the basic tide of events is still running for Ronald .Budget-choppin- g Reagan. The economy, to be sure, has not followed the course set out so confidently by the presi- dent and his chief advisers in January. They predicted that massive cuts in taxes and spending would break inflationary expectations and bring down interest rates. The massive cut in spending has been So has a massive tax cut. In addition, enacted the administration had a lucky break. Oil prices have declined with a consequent drop in the Consumer Price Index. Still, inflationary expectations have not been broken. Interest rates remain close to record highs. The persistence of high rates has queered every other element in the president's economic program. Several major companies in industries sensitive to interest charges autos, housing, airlines, savings and loan institutions totter on the edge of bankruptcy. Business activity as a whole has been sluggish, and tax collections, already diminished by the tax cut, are apt to slide further. Interest charges to the government are bound to increase. The combination of lower revenues and higher outlays inevitably affect the federal deficit. The administration's original projection of the deficit was about $12 billion in fiscal 1982, which begins next month. That was supposed to change to a slight surplus ($1.6 billion) in fiscal 1984. But unless additional cuts are made, the 1982 deficit will edge toward $60 billion. The 1984 deficit looks like it may approach $100 billion. Deficits of that size oblige the government to enter the money market as a major borrower. The competition for funds drives up interest rates. Thus the cycle of high rates, a sluggish economy and big deficits renews itself. The way to break the cycle is not in doubt. Only spending cuts now can make credible claims that deficits can be e iminated later. But if deficits did go down, interest rates would fall. Business activity would pick up, and there would be a spell of moderate prosperity at least until the onset of a new inflationary surge Exactly how much budget cutting is required is a matter of feel. The administration has already planned another $tO billion in unidentified" reductions to hit the balanced-budge- t target for 1984. Another $10 billion to $20 billion is probably needed to offset the failure of policy to date. So the total cut has to reach at least $50 billion by 1984 Finding $50 billion worth of cuts amid expenditures of more than $700 billion does not present an insurmountable difficulty. The rob comes from the distribution of projected spending. The largest expenditure by far are in transfer payments from the government to individuals $392 billion in 1984. But $309 billion of that is for Social Secuirty, veterans pensions, Medicare, unemployment insurance and Aid to Dependent Children, which the president exempted as a safety net from earlier cuts. Another $250 billion comes in an area the administration had said was in dire need defense. So presidential words will have to be eaten if the required cuts are to be made. Undoubtedly there will be friction within the administration especially between the White House and the Pentagon. Some parts of the Reagan constituency particularly older people on Social will feel betrayed. Security and Medicare The Democrats, of course, will make the most of the administrations embarrassment. They will oppose reductions in transfer pay ments, claiming they are evidence of the Republicans mean spirit. They will find in defense cuts signs of incompetence and inconsistency. But it is not as though the Democrats are in position to put across substitute measures. Most of the Democrats in the Congress favor a position that accepts the need for cuts in social spending. The party leaders most keen on maintaining transfer payments notably Sen. Edward Kennedy and Speaker Tip ONeill favor cuts in defense. So the president contends with a divided Democratic opposition. The true danger is that Reagan may not be bold enough in taking on his own constituency. If budget cuts are insufficient, interest rates will hang high and the country will be in for a long period of slow growth and high unemployment. In that climate of economic trench warfare, some weak companies might collapse and precipitate an economic tailspin instead of the moderate prosperity that is so palpably in reach. post-liber- l V V. s 4 1 |