Paul Douglas' Optimism
LEKACHMAN, ROBERT
PaulDouglas' Optimism IN OUR TIME By Paul H. Douglas Harcourt, Brace & World. 228 pp. $4.95. Reviewed by ROBERT LEKACHMAN After three terms in the United States Senate, Paul Douglas is still...
...If income is less equitably distributed in 1968 than in 1961, after two "liberal" American Presidents, what we can anticipate from a conservative Republican President is almost enough to encourage migration to Canada...
...The present condition of yesterday's Great Society demonstrates the essential fragility of liberal reform in a conservative country...
...I find it easy to prophesy that there will be time to perform the most soul-satisfying investigation before anyone asks the economists to produce a legislative proposal...
...I need hardly add that I sincerely hope Paul Douglas' optimism proves more realistic than my pessimism...
...the number of millionaires has more than doubled...
...Nevertheless, it is very difficult at the start of the Nixon era to be cheerful about the chances of a small band of legislators devoted to protecting the public interest prevailing against the rich and the powerful...
...In Douglas' tenure of office, the oil men successfully defended oil depletion allowances and won much of what they wanted in the way of offshore oil concessions...
...Reviewed by ROBERT LEKACHMAN After three terms in the United States Senate, Paul Douglas is still optimistic about the possibilities of protecting the public interest against the depredations of private raiders of the Federal treasury...
...The battlers against this proposal, too, included legions of the respectable—bankers, department store merchants, and everyone else with a vested interest in deluding ordinary men and women about the true cost of credit...
...It is worth noting that in the last eight years of Democratic Administration, the American tax system has grown less progressive...
...and the financial overachievers who reported taxable net incomes of over $1 million annually have probably trebled...
...The last portion of this volume deals with poverty and welfare in a hardheaded, compassionate way...
...But for me the moral of recent political experience is a good deal more somber...
...In the Great Society's heyday, circa 1964-1965, what proved just possible politically was the funding of a series of educational, medical, housing, and anti-poverty schemes...
...Yet once more the prospects of Republican Washington enacting even so conservative an income maintenance scheme as children's allowances (which Douglas long has favored) are minute...
...This lament is not intended to detract from the merits of Douglas' book, which embodies the characteristic virtues of its author's career and style—a devotion to the common welfare and a capacity to express that devotion in vigorous, pungent prose...
...There is no doubt that except for a few devoted souls like the late Estes Kefauver, Albert Gore, William Proxmire and Senator Douglas himself matters would have been far worse...
...These probably cost less than half the annual tax savings granted by the 1964 tax reduction and the 1965 successor to that Act...
...For years Douglas sought a "Truth-in-Lending" measure which was passed only after the ungrateful voters of Illinois failed to return him to office in 1966...
...Today, the War on Poverty is a shambles, the innovative sections of the housing laws have been starved financially, and Medicare itself is largely financed by regressive payroll taxes...
...As for more imaginative schemes like a truly re-distributive negative income tax, it is probably well that we can console ourselves with the thought that the further research along these lines now being conducted by a group of Princeton economists is an excellent idea...
...When Douglas sought to impose a withholding tax on dividends and interest payments, the savings banks mounted such a successful propaganda campaign that many small savers probably are still convinced that he had a brand-new tax in mind rather than a simple reform to plug a huge loophole in existing tax laws...
...I admire and honor a Paul Douglas whose faith in the capacity of a plutocracy to deal justly with all men has survived many blows which would have broken a less stalwart spirit...
...This lucid book, based on lectures delivered at the New School for Social Research, is a depressing reminder of just how determined and ingenious these desperadoes are...
Vol. 51 • December 1968 • No. 23
