Tuesday, October 12, 1032
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
Economics: Game
of some winners,
double-digit losers
A single adjective can shake a nation. Bubonic is an
example of one. Double-digit is another.
The term double-digit first came into vogue as a
pejorative back in the '70s when double-digit inflation
raised its nasty, spiraling head. Since then, thanks to the
interest rates of the '80s, the adjective has become
laughably quaint.
That was until last Friday when the U.S. Department
of Labor reported that we now officially live in a nation
of double-digit unemployment for the first time since the
recovery years of the Great Depression. It is perhaps the
scariest use of the term yet. It should rattle the knees of
Joe and Jane America. It is like "The Return of the Son
of Double-Digit Bad Economy," in Sensaround, come to
life.
I don't mean to be an alarmist. It is only an adjective.
Double-digit just means "more than or equal to 10." It
could have been 6.5 percent, which was enough to worry
Lyndon Johnson-. It could have been 17 percent. Instead,
rather arbitrarily, it is 10 percent.
But imagine this. Last Thursday, if the fingers on your
hands were those of an average American, the chances
were better than 50-50 that all 10 of them would have
been employed. Today, the odds favor that at least one
of your figures is unemployed. At some point, you must
become concerned.
Those 1 1 .3 million people can't all want to be poor. If
all the jobless would get in single file and allow each other
two feet, the unemployment line would run down one
lane of Interstate 80 all the way to San Francisco. The
other lane would be backed up from the Bay area to
Cleveland. It might be silly, but it could make a point.
The line wouldn't even include "those too discouraged
to look for a job. And, say you wanted to seat them all in
Memorial Stadium. You would need more than four
comparable stadiums in every county of Nebraska just to
get the "too-discouraged" out of the aisles.
If all the jobless and discouraged were made residents,
they would be the fourth largest state in the country.
That is a lot of votes.
President Reagan has said, "I'm willing to accept the
responsibility for the 2.7 percent increase if the others
accept the responsibility for the 7.4 percent." He was
referring to the 7.4 percent unemployment rate in the
United States when he took office two years ago, in 1980,
when the State of Unemployment would have only been
the ninth biggest in the country. His attitude strikes me as
a bit cavalier.
Even if double-digit is an arbitrary designation, it
means something symoblically. It must if the Democrats
can be having such fun playing political football with
it right now. I see it rather symbolically, too. I sec it as
the dark side of supply-side economics and as a bipartisan
failing.
Martin Feldstein, chairman-designate of Reagan's
Council of Economic Advisors, called the 10.1 percent un
employment rate "a statistical side effect" and blamed un
employment benefits. "We're not looking for any signifi
cant improvement," he said, "until we're into the
recovery for several months."
When even Joe and Jane America know economics is
complex stuff, it frightens me to see the persistent belief
in some that a specific cure can isolate and remedy a
specific problem, plus or minus statistical side effects.
They apparently sec the economy as more akin to a
steady machine than to a growing organism about which
little is fully understood. I lean toward the second view
and fear blind stabs could be bad medicine. It is like
letting barbers be doctors.
"The economy is not a machine," liberal economists
Lester Thurow and Robert Heilbroncr have written in
their book "Five Economic Challenges." "The parts of the
economy ... are always people. The repairs . . . are always
political. The decisions are . . . moral."
Thurow, prominent debater of supply-side economics,
has the idea that an economy is almost like a game played
with a set number of chips. Turns consist of swapping
these. In every exchange, there is always both a winner
and a loser.
Hard times are when, overall, everyone loses. The game
is fairest if everyone relinquishes chips equally or por
portionally. Inflation is somewhat comparable to this
situation. Unemployment, on the other hand, distributes
the hardship far less democratically. Instead the burden
falls on perhaps the politically weakest members cf
society, the double-digit unemployed, the statistics) side
effect, "those who are unwillingly drafted to be the In
flation fighters, as Thurow and Heilbrorer have written.
There are II J million such draftees now. If every un
employed American were a drop of water, the stone
beneath thern would be wearing thin.
David Wood
ACID RAINDROPS
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Thome's promises are deceptive
"Portrait of a FliD-Waffle-FloDDer'
Campaign rhetoric, loud hyperbole emphasized his iron
will;
"Hell face up to any issue - simple, difficult, run of the
mill. "
He was asked: "Is your name THONE?" A-tremble he
began to blink-so;
Said: "Emphatically, unequivocally, positively, - uh, I
Q Jeff Allen
think so. ..?"
- By State Sen. Ernest Chambers of Omaha
"Untitled"
Rarely may the recipient of Chambers-lesque verse
Breathe with ease as Chambers does curse.
As in this case the recipient of such
Is Governor Thone, the waffling miss-much.
Yet freely he breathes or apparently so
To his campaign he believes this verse not a blow.
How can he dare? Why doesn 't he hide?
Will his deceptions with taxes the public abide?
By Jeff Allen
Deceptions? To call them anything less would be a lie.
For that matter, to call them anything more would be
to call them "lies" and with three weeks remaining until
the general election the term "lies" js a bit much. Perhaps
it would be best to reconsider the past to determine the
most fitting description.
Recently Lincoln Journal reporter Thomas Fogarty
recapped the past 12 months of the Thone administra
tion's fiscal history in an article titled "Revenue deja
vu." what follows are paraphrases from Fogarty's article.
Oct. 6, 1981. State agency directors were informed
that because of meager tax receipts only 45 percent of
the expected 50 percent of their six month budgets would
be appropriated. Then news came from Thone's budget
director.
Oct. 26, 1981. Thone issued a call for a special session
to cut the budget by $25 million.
March 26, 1982. Thone said no increase in the 3
percent sales tax rate would be necessary.
April 7, 1982. Thone aides lobby the Legislature for i
increase in the sales tax from 3 percent ot 3,5 percent and
Thone signs the legislation raising the tax until Jan. 1,
1983,
April 29, 1982. The State Board of Equilization
approved a 2 percent increase in state individual income
tax. Thone is the presiding member of the board.
Oct. 7, 1982. Faced with considerably larger revenue
shortfalls than last year, Thone announced that agencies
would receive only 45 percent of the appropriations
rather than the full 50 percent during the first six months
of the current fiscal year. He said he would call a special
budget-cutting session of the Legislature in November, if
necessary and promised not to increase tax rates.
Sound familiar?
Candidate Thone has perceived that it is in his
personal, political best interest to deliver on his four year
promise to Nebraska's electorate that he "will not raise
taxes, no way." Thone has broken that promise three
times in the past year and he intends to mislead voters
Continued on Page 5
Israel taking a 'bum rap ' for killings
About the enormities in Lebanon's Sabra and Shatila
refugee camps, some observations:
The wincing mind and weeping heart recoil before the
shootings there - the monstrous murder, the orgy of
random killing, the systematic execution of whole
families. By near unanimity, the atrocities are believed to
have been carried out principally by the Damour Brigade
Ross Mackenzie
of Lebanon's Christian Phalange.
The major reason most often advanced is revenge for
the blowing up of Phalange leader (and Lebanon's president-elect)
Bashir Cemayel, and the 1976 slaughter of the
residents of Damour, a Lebanese Christian town; the
Damour Brigade consiiti primarily of Damour'i survivors.
Yet in the aftermath of Sabra and Shatila, the essential
complaint is not being leveled at the perpetrators of these
horrors, but at Israel.
. No sooner did the world learn about Sabra and Shatila
than the engines of outrage were oiled and fueled and set
to work spewing out hysteria about the guilt of Israel.
Defense Minister Ariel Sharon is called a butcher. Prime
Minister Mcnachcm Begin is likened to Hitler. Self
appointed moral purists are demanding that one or both
resign.
The alleged reason for Israeli guilt is that the Israeli
army, knowing what the Phalangists would do, allowed
them to enter the camps. Yet to make such an allegation
is to indulge the meanest malice. The Israeli army
authorized entry into the camps for the purpose of ferret
ing out 2,500 PLO guerrillas believed to have remained in
West Beirut in violation of the American-arranged evacua
tion accords. To suggest that the Israelis knew what the
Christians would do is to fly in the face of every moral
tenet for which Israel stands. Nevertheless, that is pre
cisely the suggestion - precisely the specific charge.
For this startling conclusion, there are two funda
mental causes. First, Israel is, well, Israel - the Jewish
state. Its every action touches the deep-running river of
anti-Semitism that flows within too many of this world's
inhabitants. Bitter hatred of Jews accounts in part for the
animosity toward Israel now.
Second, Israel, the unpardonable state, has committed
the unpardonable sin, so it is hated doubly. It has
defeated a communist enemy. About this let there be no
doubt. The Palestine Liberation Organization may be
financed mostly by the Saudis. But it is armed by the
Soviets, and its Leninist leaders are devoutly loyal to the
Kremlin.
Rarely has an in-place communist regime been defeat
ed. And when such an enterprise is defeated, the victor -in
this case, Israel - must be made to pay and pay and
pay in the theater of world opinion, to that it will not
dare (will not be allowed) to win again.
In a swift stroke, then, Sabra and Shatila have
accomplished a number of things potentially devastating
not only for Israel, but for the entire free world. Israel
was bom in the belief that its people! singular historical
ordeal would render the new country the world! moral
exemplar. The mere imputation of Israel complicity in
Sabra and Shatila undermines Israel! moral legitimacy.
Continued oa Page 6