Editorials

...not even socialists are interested in a losing enterprise...

...It seems doubtful...

...For without government enforcement to assure a far-sighted corporation that domestic competitors would also assume the cost of social concerns, market pressures rule the game - and meanwhile, there are tax relief windfalls and tempting acquisitions to hand...

...more than a billion dollars a year in higher prices for sugar and corn sweeteners...

...Leading the requests in Congress was a proposal that S & L Associations be allowed to issue tax-free savings certificates, a move that many experts deplore and that would cost the treasury billions in just one year...

...We suspect there may be more of a connection between the socially destructive impact of current corporate design and dragging U.S...

...the difference is that most good causes cannot afford to pass out half a million dollars in campaign contributions...

...The reason the Democrats writing the bill were sorely tempted: of the twenty-nine Democrats who voted with the Republicans on the budget cuts, twenty-three came from the Gulf states where the oil flows...

...What is clear is that the Reagan economic program represents an enormous act of faith in the wisdom of the U.S...

...The result was a tax bill so riddled with giveaways that it was only marginally better than the Republican legislation...

...industry, and whose communal conscience Adolph A. Berle and Gardner Means heralded in their classic 1932 study of corporations...

...Item: The Savings and Loan Associations are on the receiving end of much congressional concern .this year and are seeking billions of dollars of tax breaks one way or the other...

...The odds aren't good...

...One need not resort to the often inflated rhetoric of Latin American critics of multinationals in order to be skeptical of managerial enlightenment...

...Indeed, if there were such a direct connection, we would have already seen its consequences - for during the last decade U.S...

...Short-term gain, the evidence shows, remains the bottom line and the vehicle to corporate prestige...

...On the contrary, the "reindustrialization" package - composed of corporate tax relief (the biggest beneficiary, to the tune of $32 billion, being the oil industry), lowering of top rates of taxation on personal income, export subsidies, the relaxation of regulation, loosening of antitrust enforcement, and diminished attention to women, the poor, and minorities - leaves all the options in the executive suites of the Fortune 500...

...Reagan's move clinched at least five votes, four of them from Georgia, the major peanut state...

...Asked if President Reagan had bought his vote in the recent battle over the federal budget, the Louisiana Congressman replied: "No, I was only rented...

...corporate establishment, and exposes its leadership to political backlash should the design fail to "raise all boats'' on the promised rising tide of wealth...

...Item: For weeks the Democrats in the House worked hard to come up with a more attractive tax package than the Republicans...

...The ultimate result: a bidding war between the Democrats and the Republicans and a bonanza for the oil producers, at a cost of between $13 and $16.9 billion over six years...

...The problem comes with what a "more rigorous" commercial calculus leaves as afterthought - the so-called "externalities" like ecological effects, the social costs of relocations, occupational hazards, job security, and product quality...

...Reagan...

...Reagan promised to drop his opposition to sugar price supports, a key issue in Louisiana and other sugar-producing states...

...The larger the firm, the truer this apparently is...

...Will such conglomeration produce new plants, more jobs, more intensive research and development...

...In 1979 and 1980 these PAC's contributed half a million dollars to various members of Congress, with a large part of the funds to members of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee...

...Do mergers represent an answer...

...The author, Edward S. Herman of the Wharton School, disputes the business complaint of over-regulation, at least for big firms, as "greatly exaggerated...

...The Reagan tax program unfortunately makes little distinction between the two, and by fudging the difference, in effect it encourages investment in the quick pay-offs of collectables like Conoco rather than in new plants and equipment which take up to five or ten years to get into operation and possibly improve productivity...

...That's anything but clear...

...The terrible simplification here seems to be that sheer size of investment will improve productivity...

...America's declining competitive position in the world market, its obsolescent industrial base, needs rebuilding...

...In just the past month or so, the giants, mostly oil companies, have drawn lines of credit totalling over $40 billion...

...A close look at the day-to-day politics of taxes shows how much more was operating, on both sides of the congressional aisles, than any "mandates...

...At their think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, there's lively talk these days about the "moral vision" and "theology" behind their creation of unprecedented Western wealth...

...No one disputes that the S & L Associations are good causes, but the country is full of good causes...

...The weakness of this assumption is that there's no direct relationship between the amount of investment and productivity...

...Without.tax penalties against speculative investment, and with no tax decreases favoring decisions to build new industrial facilities, this is clearly a test for the "economic statesmen" who manage U.S...

...Such higher support prices, of course, will immediately show up in the supermarkets...

...Typical of the pressures being exerted were efforts by the lobbyists for the independent oil producers, who were asking for exemption from the windfall profits tax on their first thousand barrels of oil a day...

...Reagan does not, that their major international competitors like Japan, S,weden, and West Germany have outperformed them - and done so while beset by even worse OPEC strains and burdened with higher corporate taxes, more generous social welfare and job security, at least equal environmental constraints, and by and large more worker and state involvement in managerial decisions...

...Already, there are indications the steel industry will use most of its new cash to diversify rather than invest in new steel plants...

...From the perspective of the problem of declining productivity, merger activity looks like an insubstantial deal for the American public - a mere rearrangement of already existing capital...

...More is coming...

...capital investment has been greater than during any other comparable period since World War II...

...In an important sense," he claims,'' the success of the larger corporations follows in part from their being designed to be less 'responsible' than smaller local enterprises...

...They must know, even if Mr...

...But with government off their backs now, will they defer the fast buck for harder, long-term investments in industrial infrastructure and product quality...

...Concern about ecology," says Herman...

...Unfortunately were continually being tempted to offer Christmas-tree goodies to this group or that in order to gain support on the floor...

...these two tax-writing groups promptly obliged by approving the move to create the tax-free certificates sought by the S & L Associations...

...On the face of it, as good a deal as such transactions appear to be for stockholders and assorted lawyers and brokers, such investments seem primarily speculative rather than productive...

...Conglomeration, diversification, multinationality, all enable the giants to move about, take advantage of cheaper labor and superior tax climate, induce government concessions, and abort unionization...

...or whether catastrophic weapons will be used, or even the preservation of the local community, are matters which fall outside the planning calculus...

...The result: a Ways and Means provision that continues an indefensible tax break, worth about $400 million to approximately twenty-five hundred professional commodity traders, or an average of about $160,000 each...

...Bad news, it would seem, for those profit-deferring long-term investments so important for reindustriali-zation...

...Well, yes, in the sense that the one thing as certain as death and taxes is that most people strongly prefer avoiding both...

...As one executive friend of ours put it, "We're so efficient, we're destroying ourselves...

...The fact is that our declining productivity ratios reflect a far more complex nexus of causes - risingoil prices, expanding service sector, low worker and executive morale--than the Reagan simplification takes account of...

...Quite the opposite, he finds that Big Business's success in preserving its own autonomy and Immobilizing a "weak" government, incapable of addressing major social and economic problems, is remarkable...

...And it may have occurred to them that some of these "burdens" have a direct or indirect bearing on quality products and productiv-ity...

...corporate executives will rise to meet this challenge...

...The rental price: Mr...

...Item: Along the same lines, President Reagan reversed his earlier position and promised to support peanut-price legislation in return for Southern Democratic votes for his tax-cut bill in the House...

...corporate assets has changed hands...

...And yes, in the sense that the president and his allies did a superb job of generating public support and putting pressure on key legislators...

...What are the odds that U.S...

...The question is, what kind of a tax cut...

...It's unlikely the foreign marriage of greater social welfare with profit-delaying productive investment will be much imitated...

...Reagan claims the tax cuts do: reverse half a century of U.S...

...And lest the exemption of one little old thousand barrels of oil a day seem paltry it should be noted that one thousand barrels of oil a day comes to over $ 12 million a year...

...Thus far, Herman thinks, neither government nor social pressure has made much of a dent in the power of the largest firms to do pretty much as they like...

...productivity than usually meets the eyes of corporate leadership...

...The agreement pledges the White House to work for peanut price support at $600 a ton, plus an escalator clause for future years, up from the present $455 a ton...

...POLITICS OF TAXES Was the administration's tax cut victory the sign of a "mandate" from the people...

...Any administration, we're willing to wager, can rustle up a mandate to cut taxes...

...Item: An administration effort to end an exotic tax break for commodity traders in this year's tax bill lost out after traders conveyed promises of political contributions to Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee...

...The cost to consumers of Mr...

...Getting a reasonable return on an investment is of course no crime...

...Item: Everyone knows about the case of Democratic Congressman John Breaux...

...Closer to home, Corporate Control, Corporate Power, the Twentieth Century Fund's update of Berle's study of corporate behavior, came out last April (Cambridge University Press, $18.95, 432 pp...

...To add some political muscle to their requests for help, the S & L Associations have their own political action committees...

...More to the point, Herman sadly finds little empirical evidence nowadays for the kind of corporate statesmanship Berle prophesied...

...In fact, today's enormously more sophisticated corporate organization (and, let us add, the harrassing computer print-out of profit performance every executive receives weekly) makes the profit standard "more rigorous" than ever...

...Breaux's support for Mr...

...history...

...But no poll and no set of election returns that we know of indicates a desire on the part of Americans to do what Mr...