Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR fallout I have had an opportunity to read the article, "Fallout and Health," by John M, Fowler and Walter C. Bauer (NL, July 1). I think it is one of the most comprehensive, detailed...
...Does the public-school teacher really hold a menial status, and is he "despised by society in the only terms it values...
...It spells increasing costs, which necessarily exert upward pressure on prices...
...and Monthly Labor Review, May 1957...
...There is a much more fundamental aspect to consumer credit, however, than its size, Consumer credit is major means by which the economies of full employment are realized...
...Victor Adler died in November 1918, a few days after becoming Foreign Minister of Austria...
...Washington, D. C. Mike Mansfield U.S...
...This development inhibits the growth of real wealth per capita...
...What is necessary is not merely an assertion of the public's authority in one of its most vital concerns, but institutions, such as strong investment-allocation and price-control boards, which could secure its interest...
...On the other hand, production still is not meeting the unabated needs for housing, urban renewal and transportation, education and community facilities...
...Just as a business firm operates much more economically by incurring medium- and long-term debt to make its capital purchases, so the individual family gains substantial economies by covering its needs of durable goods without waiting for its cash savings to accumulate to pay for them...
...real wages rose only 20 per cent...
...The average pay was over $6,000 a year for ten months' work...
...And such truly productive services as the teaching and medical professions remain seriously deficient...
...It was not Lenin but Daniel Oe Leon who used that invective...
...The great majority of people taking out installment credit are in the $4,000-to-$7,000 income group...
...A great part of the money they spent on allegedly excessive consumption would presumably have to be taxed away to finance Schnabel's proposed public works...
...and what may be regarded as his policy recommendation is rather anti-climactic and misses the political heart of the issue...
...I have based my opinion not only on the fact that continued testing of such large hydrogen weapons is unnecessary in our defense effort, but—most important—on the lack of positive knowledge of the effects of radioactive fallout on future generations...
...It highlights the grave limitation of monetary controls in circumstances where the private power of business rivals that of public authority and can openly flout its declared policy...
...In my opinion, sufficient evidence has been presented, as is so well documented in this article, to make it perfectly clear that we and other nuclear powers cannot continue to test these large weapons indiscriminately...
...There can be little doubt of the industrial unions' awareness of the need to keep wage demands within the limits of productivity growth...
...real wages gained 32 per cent...
...We must not let ourselves become obsessed with weapons of mass destruction, but we should be directing our scientific genius toward the utilization of nuclear power for the benefit of mankind...
...But demands for wage hikes exceeding productivity gains are inevitable in labor-intensive industries, such as most of the service trades...
...The remainder of Shub's essay was dotted with similar indignant exaggerations...
...A Consumers' Anti-Inflation League, as suggested by Schnabel, could not be more than a pressure group and would, moreover, futilely concentrate on the visible effects rather than the structural causes of inflation...
...In his review of James JolTs The Second International (NL, July 8), David Shub wrote that Victor Adler became first President of the Austrian Republic in 1919...
...Yet, some publicists shed crocodile tears for the poor abused teachers who did not draw paychecks during the summer months, when they were drowsing on college campuses and picking up credits to increase their salaries...
...During » recent school-board election fight, it was revealed that their salaries range from $4,000 to $9,000 a year—depending upon length of tenure and the number of postgraduate credits and degrees they have...
...In addition, there is no indication that the Soviet Union is interested in "clean" bombs, nor is there any certainty of the use of "clean" bombs as opposed to "dirty" bombs in time of war...
...Is Schnabel's assumption of excessive wage increases sound...
...Yet these people already pay stiff taxes...
...Nor did Shub's characterization of the pupils as "young psychotics'' indicate an emotion-free attitude to the problem of public education...
...I won't attempt to quarrel with him on the world situation...
...New York City Max Nomad young generation Anatole Shub's June 17 contribution to the "Young Generation" symposium paints a dreary picture, and, while some of his insights and phrasings are effective, I wonder whether it is accurate...
...School teachers in Los Angeles are in the upper half of the social and economic bracket...
...The amount of installment debt outstanding is now around 14 per cent of disposable income (total consumer debt includes personal loans, which are not strictly relevant here), and the rate of its increase was alarming perhaps only in 1955 (a year of heavy auto sales...
...jn his review of Samuel Gompers's autobiography (NL, July 1), Ben Seligman wrote that Lenin had called the AFL "a rope of sand...
...The first President was Michael Hainisch, who was elected in 1920...
...This is an organization which 1 regard as money-raising group preying upon the helpless fears of readers...
...inflationary factor—seems to me the weakest...
...He does so by assuming wage increases which exceed productivity gains...
...Aren't these already redistributing" the benefits of their greater productivity through higher profit taxes and rising payments for services...
...Available information indicates that it will take several years to perfect such a weapon, and then there is no assurance that it will be 100 per cent "clean...
...This is the gravest issue that faces the nations of the world, and it is a problem that must be met...
...In bituminous coal mining, one of the industries for which he happens somewhat casually to make his assumption, productivity rose by 62 per cent from 1948 to 1955...
...New York City H. Brand...
...Here is one of the reasons for the drive by conservative forces to reduce budgetary, including military, outlays...
...Sources: U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Postwar Productivity in the United States," paper presented at International Conference on Productivity, Paris...
...Some of his arguments, however, make assumptions or come to conclusions which are unwarranted...
...I might point out that I am not at all sure that the "clean'' bomb is the answer to this problem...
...But the rapid proliferation and increasingly irrational allocation of resources to the (perhaps rather too broadly defined) service sector is probably the major factor in raising the costs of the productive sectors...
...So far this year, repayments have not been far below new loans extended...
...As Managing Editor of The New Leader, he has access to more information on international affairs than comes my way...
...But once this assumption is made, the stability of profit rates ceases to be a cause of inflation...
...Schnabel's second point—namely, that big business, by financing its expansion through price rises, imposes a form of forced saving on the consumer—is well taken...
...A further question arises: Isn't the very growth of the service sector made possible by the mounting productivity in the extractive and manufacturing sectors...
...As you know, I have advocated a multilateral ban on the testing of nuclear weapons of one megaton or more in strength...
...The third point—consumer credit as an...
...They are usually relatively young families who need consumer durables the most...
...I thought the description of fallout, and of the difference between the fission and fusion processes which power our nuclear weapons, was especially well done...
...But take the domestic side...
...True, it acts as a multiplier, but it multiplies unstable magnitudes, and it is these we must find and analyze...
...at the same time it tends to redistribute a growing share of it to the economically unproductive categories indicated above...
...Schnabel claims that, but for advertising, much of the money spent on "excessive" consumption would be available for schools, roads, etc...
...I wouldn't want to be forced into the position of defending "the advertising octopus which seizes two-thirds of our periodical space," which Shub emphatically belabors, but 1 notice in the same issue of The New Leader pious full-page ad for the American Cancer Society...
...This stability is, after all, inherent in an economy where there still is a large degree of competition for investment funds and where the profit rate is the criterion of managerial efficiency...
...It could not buck corporate interests, whose power stems from both their vast properties and the legal institutions safeguarding their control...
...But, the cost of mass communication being as high as it is, even publications like The New Leader, which does not have a mass circulation and possibly is not aiming at one, are fore id to subsidize the cost of printing through ads...
...Be thankful you have not been forced to descend to truss and patent-medicine announcements like the Nation...
...Hollywood Ridgely Cummincs inflation Oscar Schnabel's article, "Business and Inflation" (NL, June 17), points to some of the central causes of the strong inflationary trends in the American economy...
...A full-employment economy raises problems which cannot be dealt with by mere pressure tactics...
...Senator, Montana correction May I call attention to two slight inaccuracies in reviews recently published in The New Leader...
...This clearly calls for a redistribution of the productivity gains made in the capital-intensive industries, by means of lower prices on their goods...
...The financing of public improvements seems to me a question of the rational allocation of investment funds, not one of taxing medium- and low-income earners...
...I feel that this is essential in the interest of peace and the protection of the human race...
...This can be decried on cultural grounds, but on political grounds I find it altogether salutary...
...His major economic proposal, however, buried under his quite justified objections to business^ huge advertising outlays, is the channeling of consumer income into public works...
...I think it is one of the most comprehensive, detailed accounts to date of what I consider one of the most serious problems facing the human race today, i.e., radioactive fallout from the testing of nuclear weapons...
...Schnabel first attempts to show how business's insistence on a stable profit rate leads to inflation...
...Aside from necessarily wasteful military expenditures, there is the economically and socially unjustifiable growth of employment and investment in financial and sales agencies, private and public administration, advertising, etc...
...In manufacturing, productivity rose 33 per cent between 1947 and 1956...
...But, on the whole, I give him "E" for effort and "A" for being stimulating...
...An incidental effect of the growing role of consumer credit is that it keeps the economy basically consumer-oriented...
...This article puts the problem in everyday language so that all those interested may have an understanding of the process and the after-effects...
...A similar picture of increases in real wages lagging behind or merely matching gains in productivity holds for the auto and steel industries...
...Indeed, they are...
...Besides, there is no such phrase as "rope of sand" in the Russian language...
Vol. 40 • July 1957 • No. 29
