Dear Editor

...Dear Editor No Similarity In the midst of her otherwise astute comments on Peter Ackroyd's biography, Ezra Pound and His JforW ("Writers and Writing," NL, April 6), Phoebe Pettingell makes a singularly obtuse comparison between Oscar Wilde and the treasonous poet from Hail-ey, Idaho She asserts, against all evidence "Like Oscar Wilde, Pound needed a spell of incarceration to make him realize that he had misjudged the nature of his actions as well as how others would react to them, like Wilde, too, his eventual understanding destroyed his confidence as an artist " Homosexuality is hardly in a class with treason and anti-Semitism While it is true that Wilde underestimated the viciousness with which the Sodomy Laws would be applied in his case, he was never deluded as to the "nature of his actions " The laws were barbaric, as are their successors still on the books, and even during his bleakest moments in Reading gaol Wilde remained unswervingly convinced that his incarceration was unjust His only regret was for the pain that his miscalculation of public opinion caused himself, his family and his friends, he did not repent his homosexuality Thus there was no "evenutual misunderstanding" of a past transgression to cost Wilde his artistic nerve The ostracism and poverty that resulted from his scandalous liaison with Lord Alfred Douglas were what sealed him off from the audience he needed to make his Elizabethan wit shine Wilde did plenty of foolish things (like not cutting loose from the demented Douglas at the first opportunity), but his only mortal sin against the muse—and the community—was wasting his time and talent instead of giving us more plays and essays Pound, on the other hand, did come to see the anti-Semitic broadcasts he did for the Fascists as evil He had after all done something genuinely reprehensible, unlike the author of "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" and other neglected classics of humane, generous thought The difference is one between a sunny genius done in by the odium of philistines, and a cranky poet who was finally able to look into a mirror and recognize the monster he had become It's a shame that Pettingell marred her review by reaching for the first likeness that occurred to her?here are two poets who spent time in jail Seizing on this superficial similarity adds nothing to our understanding of either Pound or Wilde New York City Michael Grant The Dismal Science I certainly agree with J P LeClair's letter criticizing the one-solution nearsightedness of economists ("Dear Editor," NL, March 23) Jimmy Carter was shrewd enough to recognize that our tax system is a disgrace, but he went for four years without proposing effective reform One has to assume that he couldn't make heads or tails of the competmg panaceas Sometimes I wonder if anyone has the time and broadmindedness to read the relevant books, like Sidney Weintraub's Capitalism's Inflation and Unemployment Crisis, Jude Wanmnski's unabashed Kemp-Roth Laffensm, The Way the World Works, and Lester Thurow's The Zero-Sum Society, in which a supposedly liberal economist comes out in favor of consumption taxes George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty is simply the latest contribution to the arguments Perhaps a solution can be constructed from the best that these competing theones have to offer Tax reform combining Weintraub, Laffer and Thurow?that is, reducing income tax rates a la Laffer and converting the corporate income tax into Weintraub's tax incomes policy (tip), instead of eliminating it as Thurow recommends—would be a start To give labor an incentive besides wages for lending their support to such a plan, the repeal of the worst anti-labor provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act should be thrown in And the institution of a value-added tax (vat), or a national sales tax on more basic items, should be considered Perhaps price controls on necessities, to appease Leftists like Gar Alperowitz, would also be necessary All these steps together might produce a package deal with a chance of working One wonders, however, if the specialists ever read each other's books Until the Left and Right get together on a package designed for the benefit of all, the bourgeois monetarists are going to continue making life difficult for everyone except heirs and young bank managers "And the inheritors shall inherit the earth and revolution" seems to be the line being drawn between rich and poor worldwide Austin, Texas GaryL Jordan...