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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (July 5, 1985)
Friday, July 5, 1985 The Nebraskan Page 5 Tax reforms could knock-out steel industry L II .1 -I ..! i . . ... .... ...... .... OS fXl he small, clean, cool, quiet world I of the microchip has made North JL ern California's "Silicon Valley" a symbol of American rearing to "go for it." But Pennsylvania's Monongahela Valley the hot, muscular world of blast furnaces is not yet gone. Not yet. Pittsburgh was recently rated first among America's 329 metropolitan areas as the best place to live. The air is now clean because so many smokestacks are cold, and the largest employer is not U.S. Steel, it is the University of Pittsburgh. The transformation of Pitts burgh is a tribute to the suppleness of American society. But in the mean streets of Braddock just outside Pitts burgh, you see the weary flesh and blank faces of the people who are casu alties of the wrenching readjustment the poor, who break when more supple people merely bend. The steel region is no stranger to suffering. William Manchester says that in 1934 the average steelworker toiled in dangerous settings to earn $369 a year, supporting six people. When the movie "Modern Times ' came to Pitts burgh, "blue-collar audiences did not laugh at Charlie Chaplin's parody of a workman's five-minute break, in which his hands continued to mime the machinery at first and then slowed down just long enough to allow him to grab a glass of water." i?i George Will Today, Social Darwinists, livinff in cocoons of abstractions, say, with icy complacency, that the United Steel workers union did its work too well, pricing labor, and hence American steel, out of competition. There is a bit of truth to that, but it takes a tougher moralist than I to lament the physical safety and economic gains the USW brought to workers in the Mon Valley. Besides, the steel industry's primary problem is that it is competing not with foreign corporations similarly dis ciplined by market forces, but with for eign governments that have flooded the world with excess capacity and are running nationalized steel pia-its as jobs programs. For Americans too young to have experienced the Depression most of us this valley is a stunning classroom in which to learn about the death of the spirit that follows the death of industries. Here in Braddock, a slimmed-down labor force in a modernized plant is making steel in a drama of fire and sweat that any American could profit from watching. But the plant is an island of wholesome roar in an ocean of deadly silence, an ocean of idled humanity that laps up to the plant gate. Much of American industry is back and standing tall, but steel is flat on its back, woozy and worried that the tax-reform plan will deliver another roundhouse punch. How big America's steel industry should be is debatable, but the need for an efficient core of that industry is not. America steelmakers can compete if, but only if, they modernize their plants. The tax proposal would make such investment less attractive. The plan would lower rates for individuals and.riise revenues from businesses even while lowering the business tax rate from 46 to 33 percent. It would manage that by (among other things) repealing the investment tax credit and making depreciation schedules less generous than those in many other industrial nations. This would raise production costs and dim inish U.S. relative productivity in heavy investment at a moment when the strong dollar is handicapping U.S. companies in international competi tion. The federal tax code collects approxi mately one-fifth of GNP one of every five dollars generated by the economy" of this complex industrial nation. Such a code can not helD but embodv an industrial policy. Under the President's plan, the increase in the tax burden on those industries that demand constant heavy capital purchases, such as steel and auto industries, would help pay also for a three-year extension of the research and development tax credit, and a cut in the maximum capital gains rate. These are boons to venture capitalists and the high-technology in dustries they currently favor. Under the tax plan as proposed, Ronald Reagan's hard-charging yuppie entrepreneurs would do better than Lane Kirkland's struggling blue-collar manufacturing workers. But many Demo crats know that the rising blight of rust is ruining their neighborhoods. So be fore concluding that the tax treatment of business the Reagan industrial policy is settled, remember: Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is as Democratic as is his hometown (Chicago). And he resembles a yuppie about as much as Pittsburgh's Iron City beer resembles Perrier. 1985, Washington Post Writers Group 'Mr. Last9 lapses into past with no last words Archie Lewellyn Grant di ed yester day in a nursing home in Osca loosa, Fla., following a short illness. He was 84 years old and the last driver to have signaled before turning. Mr. Grant, known to generations of school kids as "Mr. Last," claimed to have made the turn that made him famous in 1984. He was living at the ftSl Richard y Cohen time in Washington, D.C., and was about to make a right turn on Connec ticut Avenue when for some reason he signaled his intentions. "I don't know , what got into me," he later said, "but I just flipped the stalk and the turn sig nal went on. Later I was told I was the last person to do that." Mr. Grant's claim was never offi cially verified, but most scholars of extinct customs take him at his word. In fact, the more they studied Mr. Grant the more apparent it became that he was the last person to do a number of things. He was, for instance, the last person to stop for a yellow light, come to a complete stop at a stop sign or give pedestrians the right of way. Mr. Grant, a short, fastidious man, was also the last person to say "thank you" to strangers and to hold the door for someone behind him. He never opened his car door into traffic (the last person not to do that) and was the last person not to ask "Who's this?" . when suspecting he had called a wrong number. A native of Washington, Mr. Grant graduated from the old Technical High School (now the College of Office and Computer Sciences) and went to work at the old War Department. He was the last person to call it by that name. Then he transferred to the old Health, Edu cation and Welfare Department and was the last person to call it by that name, too. He also was the last person to refer to a revenue enhancement as a tax increase and in 1984 called a Free dom Fighter a mercenary and then, gasping and giggling at what he had done, apologized. Dubbed "Mr. Last" by newspaper columnists, Mr. Grant made frequent appearances at the White House. He was appointed by President Reagan to the Geneva arms talks, the Space Shut tle program, the Pornography Commis sion and along with Frank Sinatra and Mother Teresa got an annual medal of some kind from the White House. He was the last person to be annually honored in this fashion. After his move to Florida, school children visiting nearby Disney World came to see him. He would tell them what he had been the last person to do. Besides some of things already menti oned, Mr. Grant was the last person to read an entire book, eat hot pasta, become engaged before marriage, never have a ham and cheese on a croissant, and never wear colored underwear. "White is the only color for me," he would assert. Mr. Grant had other "lasts" to his credit. He was the last person never to have been in therapy, to have been married only once and to be absolutely sure he was a heterosexual. He was also the last person to have worn knickers in his youth and to have been in a movie theater with more than 100 seats. He claimed to be the last person to have paid less than $2 for a box of popcorn, but scholars disputed that assertion. He was indisputably the last person to have gone to a "men's only" barber shop and, shortly before his death, he became the last person never to have jogged. He was very proud of that. Even in speech, Mr. Grant compiled some lasts. He was the last person to say ice box or phonograph or (1974) Victrola. Until the end, he called Vete rans Day, Armistice Day, referred to Memorial Day as Decoration Day and never knew what President's Day was. Until the very end, Mr. Grant regaled school children with the way things used to be. Just last Friday, he told some kids how he had been the last person to have eaten plain vanilla ice cream, to have had his groceries packed in a paper bag at Safeway and not to have been computer literate. None of the kids believed him and one of them cried. Mr. Grant is survived by his wife, Martha, of Oscaloosa, Fla., and a son, Walter, of Washington, D.C. There were no last words. 1085, Washington Post Writers Group r i Know "Vx'" . Nk What --7 Game With --LJ'itif , My V )) Contact V Lenses? '-'n Jody Nelson and Jill Welsh, University Students. Free in-office consultations to discuss eyes and contact lenses. A thorough exainination of eye function and eye health by my doctor. 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