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
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