Wealth and Want, by Stanley Lebergott
Dickman, Howard
BOOKS IN REVIEW - "Wealth and Want, by Stanley Lebergott" / Princeton University Press / $6.95 "The question is one of simple expediency for the first populist Secretary of the Treasury: how much could be...
...He melds wide-ranging erudition, subtle reasoning power, dry humor, and a keen imagination into Howard Dickman recently received his Ph.D...
...Three hundred and fifty dollars...
...He reports that non-occupational diseases and injuries account for about "96 percent" of the employee time lost due to disability...
...Perhaps we need to examine the blithe assumption that taxation should be an instrument of gleichshaltung and not merely a means of raising the rental payment for government services rendered...
...We need only do away with prosperity to end the problem of relative poverty...
...But doesn't this mean that every time someone dies, per capita welfare increases, and that every time someone is born, per capita welfare decreases...
...From there, others may proceed with the root canal work...
...Not so here...
...I was distressed to hear him say, for instance, that "confiscation of the rich would be a moral policy in the U.S...
...How callous and insensitive can the man be...
...Although it is difficult to estimate the total cost of complying with many OSHA standards and regulations, the industrial cost of the existing OSHA noise standard (a maximum level of 90 decibels during an eight-hour working day) is estimated at $13 billion...
...tions against those who would waste the nation's resources...
...Professor Lebergott has set out to explore some factual and philosophical bases of current government policy...
...What a melancholy equation...
...How can this absurdity be true...
...today, but not an expedient one," since, he reasons, confiscation entails only a mechanical tinkering with our already progressive tax rates...
...If that program were ended one of the most complete foods would be cheaper, and could be more widely consumed by the poor...
...rather than to measure the dollar value of that product...
...nutrition average (assuming they ate the stuff...
...That depends on what kind of poverty you have in mind...
...Howard Dickman thirteen terse, elegantly understated essays which question policies and assumptions that hardly anyone in the university milieu dares question publicly anymore...
...He also wonders about occupational safety and health regulations, pointing out that in 1974 the average cost of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) compliance ranged from $35,000 for a company with up to 100 employees to over $4.5 million for a company with 5,000 employees...
...The Institute estimated that the proposed standards could raise the price of a $100 gasoline-powered rotary mower to as much as $186...
...According to Weidenbaum, the choice of rules and regulations is too often made by persons who do not understand the activity they are trying to regulate...
...Professor Lebergott communicates even the most elusive concepts simply, vividly, and gracefully...
...Food stamps "quite reasonably permit people to use the money saved by stamps on other purposes....The USDA can give someone food stamps...
...The method is to show the uses to which the national product has been put (how many families in homes with central heating, plumbing, separate bedrooms, etc...
...But in another essay, "GNP and the Garden of Eden," Lebergott "saves the phenomenon...
...This piece, "Per Capita Income and the Angel of the Lord," will cause consternation in the ranks of the dismal scientists...
...But what about the morality of the progressive principle, or of taxation itself...
...His frame of reference is the world of facts...
...Push mowers would increase in price between 30 and 74 pertent....The largest price rises, in the range of 35 to 86 percent, would occur on manual-start push rotary motors [mowers...
...There are serious questions as to what rules to set, how detailed they should be, and how they should be administered...
...What would it be, one wonders, for the planetary poor...
...thus "OSHA-mandated efforts are...limited to the remaining four percent of disability-caused absenteeism...
...Isn't "per capita income" an objective, reliable measure of a society's or a nation'swelfare...
...There are more G.T...
...Yet after decades of bemoaning our "radically unequal" income distribution, none of the epigones of Marx seems to have asked this simple, empirical question...
...Bowden In this new book on government regulation, Murray Weidenbaum starts with a refreshing outlook: Unless you are an anarchist you believe that the government should set the rules for society...
...Death increases welfare, life decreases welfare...
...Sarkes Tarzian Inc...
...BOOK REVIEW Wealth and Want Stanley Lebergott / Princeton University Press / $6.95 "The question is one of simple expediency for the first populist Secretary of the Treasury: how much could be gotten for the poor by confiscating the incomes of the rich...
...He takes us through the cavernous demimonde of government studies, reports, surveys, and family budgets upon which these social problems are presumed to exist...
...Not the least among the virtues of this book is its style...
...There is no Latin phraseology to glaze the eye, no arcane jargon to narcotize the brain...
...A society acting through government can and should act to protect consumers against rapacious sellers, individual workers against unscrupulous employers, and future genera...
...What about the "relative poverty" of those who enjoy less than the mythical average American...
...Not yet, at any rate...
...Surely the rich have gotten richer, while the poor have gotten poorer...
...important, hidden costs: Every new regulation increases the cost of production, and this additional expense must be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices...
...There is, Lebergott points out, an escape from this wheel of fate...
...Can American capitalism end poverty...
...Surelyeconomic and social mobility have declined...
...For larger firms the costs are correspondingly higher...
...Yet, according to the Council on Wage and Price Stability, there is no research evidence for the health or safety value of either standard...
...Stanley Lebergott, Hubbard Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University, does...
...He discovers that the alleged problem is not only wildly exaggerated, but that the solutions proposed are astronomically more expensive than necessary...
...Professor Lebergott occasionally avoids examining the "philosophical-ethical"premises of social policy...
...Well, that kind of poverty has increased for more than a century, just as prosperity and general living standards have advanced...
...nor will giving the poor more There is opportunity in America...
...Lack of proper nutrition is by no means necessarily a function of income level...
...BOOK REVIEW Business, Government and the Public Murray L. Weidenbaum / Prentice-Hall / $12.95 G.T...
...If these efforts were effective in reducing the four percent, the cost could be somewhat (but not much) justified...
...And what would it be in the second year of that populist administration...
...The issues are heavy, controversial, and complicated...
...The problem goes beyond the skyrocketing administrative costs of regulatory agencies (rising from $1.9 billion in 1974 to $2.8 billion in 1976...
...An observation by the medical director of Exxon illustrates the overkill nature of this invasion...
...Don't be too sure...
...His probing factual presentation exposes the cavities...
...But that, it is protested, is only one-dimensional poverty...
...For example, as Weidenbaum points out: The Stanford Research Institute has estimated that the mandatory safety standards developed by Consumers Union for the [Consumer Product Safety] Commission would add $250 million to the price tag for power lawn mowers and put 25 companies out of business...
...There is another aspect of this invasion: conflicts of interest that bias the formulaThe American Spectator December 1977 37...
...Professor Lebergott shows that for well over a century the top wealth holders have maintained (not increased) their "share" of the national wealth...
...A free market...
...Moreover, the rate for "lost workday" cases in the manufacturing sector rose 7.1 percent during that same period...
...Bloomington, Indiana 36 The American Spectator December 1977 money necessarily improve their diet...
...The Census data for 1971 reveals a "confiscation dividend" of $350 per family unit, if the egalitarians expropriated all American incomes above $25,000 and divided the take (without any skimming) among those whose incomes were below $7,000...
...The greater the number and variety of things, choices, and opportunities to be had, the more numerous and varied the relative deprivation of those who do not have them...
...it cannot thereby make him consume the right nutrients...
...Weidenbaum examines many examples of this invasion by government regulators into the realm of business management...
...One can, after all, compare the aggregate living standards of a society over time without falling into the per capita trap...
...and because of their ignorance of business operations, regulators apply these rules with expensive and in some cases unworkable rigidity...
...Academic discussion of them is usually leaden and dull, "pop" commentary superficial and given to enthusiasm...
...One does not see the obstacles which progressive income taxes present to those building their fortunes from a more modest base...
...If Professor Lebergott does not sound the deepest springs of government policy, the beliefs and attitudes they presuppose, his contribution is extremely valuable nonetheless...
...Cheaper mowers tend to be less safe than more expensive models, but Weidenbaum asks us to consider whether greater safety is worth the higher prices...
...average hours of work, etc...
...Surely, therefore, we need massive, multi-billion dollar government programs to bring "the diet of the poor up to the level of the nation" ? Professor Lebergott is not so sure...
...But membership in this group, contrary to popular belief, is neither stable nor self-perpetuating...
...A large percentage in any given generation rises from a lower wealth class, and has in this century, I would add, in spite of progressive taxation...
...Capitalism has already done away with the "coarse and untidy kind that leads to agony, to starvation, and to death...
...Thus, rules tend to be written in much more detail than is necessary, realistic, or economically worth the effort...
...Bowden is Director of Educational Relations for AT&T...
...That's right...
...But, as in most things in life, the sensible questions are not matters of either/or, but rather of more or less and how...
...in history from the University of Michigan...
...Surely there is malnutrition, "possibly endemic" in American society, and surely this malnutrition is characteristic of the poor...
...Capitalism equals prosperity equals poverty...
...One sees the huge interest and dividend incomes of those who already possess wealth...
...Cheaper still, why not abolish the government's control of milk prices...
...An economist and historian of the first rank, Stanley Lebergott is also a member of that endangered species, the non-totalitarian liberal...
...You will find no unfocused daydreaming here, no evasive fantasy which has come to be the normal bill of fare in social commentary...
...The system prevents rather than enhances "equality of opportunity" and upward economic mobility...
...After two years of full operation, however, OSHA has had no discernible impact—the number of job-related injuries and illnesses actually increased from 5.6 million in 1972 to 5.9 million in 1973...
...This is especially true of safety regulations, which protect consumers by denying them—particularly the poor—the opportunity to purchase relatively dangerous or shoddy, but also much cheaper, products...
...Thus, we can enthusiastically advocate stringent controls to avoid infant crib deaths without simultaneously supporting a plethora of detailed federal rules and regulations dealing with the color of exit lights and the maintenance of cuspidors...
...The cost of a slightly more rigorous maximum level of 85 decibels, proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, is estimated at approximately $32 billion...
...Professor Lebergott discloses, for those who cannot conceive of solving social problems save by direct government intervention, that a mere $1.4 billion of milk and vitamins would bring every poor family up to the U.S...
Vol. 11 • December 1977 • No. 2
