Lunik and Ike's Budget
NIEBUHR, REINHOLD
Balanced economy poses serious threat to U.S. survival LUNIK AND IKE'S BUDGET By Reinhold Niebuhr SOME coincidences of history are funny, some are ironic, and some are frightening. A coincidence...
...But granted that the budget ought to balance, could an Administration which promised tax reduction possibly consider increase of taxes...
...The Byzantine civilization, challenged by the Arabs, and the Latin civilization, challenged by the Teutonic barbarians, come to mind as interesting historical analogies...
...The other part of the coincidence is the presentation of the President's balanced budget...
...The moon rocket only accentuated a condition which was apparent for some time, and which the Administration assiduously contrived to hide from the nation...
...We are confronted with an even more profound deficiency in the imagination of a whole nation, rather than any of its leaders...
...We are dealing with the pre- Keynesian view of the relation of government to the economic enterprise in tlie mind of an ex-general who is President of the United States...
...It is arguable that the danger of inflation is the greater of two dangers when our economy still registers about four million unemployed...
...And this picayune rise is being proposed in the very year that the Soviets have challenged us in the realm of outer space...
...But also fortunately, they are exact enough to teach lessons to those who are not averse to learning in time what price must be paid for survival...
...Perhaps it is even more important to ask whether the Democrats, who have already been accused by the President of being "spenders," and who may be relied upon to challenge this inadequate budget, can also be relied upon to challenge the complacency of the nation and suggest that the peril in which we live might require a drastic reduction of the living standards of the whole nation...
...That condition is the gradual widening of the gap between ourselves and the Russians...
...Part of the price of escape from red ink is that the defense budget is being increased by only S145 million over the current 40.8 billions...
...We are evidently dealing with something more than the aberrations of two typical business men, who thought it dangerous "to take too much out of the economy"—meaning by that spending money for larger national purposes than for narrow consumer needs...
...But the rocket had sufficient power to defy the moon's gravitational pull and to become an artificial planet of the sun...
...But if someone does not awaken the nation, we might have the same destiny which many soft and effete nations and empires had before us, when they failed to meet the challenge of a political force which had been disciplined by poverty and privation to a tough and hardy stance in the competitions of life...
...It may be too much to ask this of a party which confidently expects to win the next election, and whose chances would be imperiled if it challenged one of the dearest illusions of the American people—the illusion that we have the highest living standards in the world by some kind of divine right...
...Prestige-wise, too...
...It is significant that the budget balances some years after those passionate budget balancers, George Humphrey and Charles Wilson, have left the Cabinet...
...The scientific achievement was tremendous...
...At the beginning of the month, Moscow announced the successful laimching of Lunik, a "moon rocket...
...He set total expenditures and receipts at about $77 billion...
...We are confronted with the complacency of a rich and soft culture which does not brook any interference with its high living standards, including, of course, the annual new automobile model...
...The Russian intransigence in regard to Berlin is one of the consequences of this superiority...
...Perhaps it is equally important that Russia's superiority in the field widens the dangerous gap in the "balance of terror" upon which the peace of the world depends...
...Lunik's launching has resulted in tremendous gains for the USSR in the "non-committed" world...
...It seems to prove to the non-industrial nations of Asia and Africa that there is a path to technical competence which does not require the difficult achievement of an "open society...
...Perhaps the budget ought to balance, considering the perils of inflation...
...It dwarfed our achievement in putting an Atlas missile into orbit...
...It climaxed the whole series of Soviet achievements, beginning with the sputniks...
...A coincidence between events in the Soviet Union and the United States, the two imperial powers of the world, which occurred this month belongs in the last category...
...It proved that, though Russia may be inferior to us in general productive capacity, it has gained superiority over us in many technical fields, particularly in the conquest of outer space...
...Fortunately, no historical analogies are ever exact...
Vol. 42 • January 1959 • No. 4
