Imperial Valley press., 1942-05-24
CAPITAL TALKS
by
Peter
Edison

What all this rationing, this con-
servation. this price-fiXing, this in
creased taxation, this enforced saw
ing and this effort to control in
flation amount to is simply that
the federal government is taking
over the management of your
standard of living for the duration
In peace times this would be
known as life under a dictatorship.
The eshort and ugly name for it
under a democracy Is war.
If you are accustomed to
worrying about your standard of
living the way you worry about
your kips or waistline, your
falling hair. teeth and arches
or your hardening arteries, you
should decide whether you like
ii or not. If you discover that
YOU can take a government
standard of living all right,
when comes the revolution az
ter the war is over, you'll be
that mCch more content.
What does this government-im-
posted standard of living do to you?
The responsibilities of your gov
ernment in managing your stand
ard Of living. rationing your goods
and writing your tax bills, are pri-
marily three:
/. The supply of civilian goods
available for distribution among
the people must be equitably ap-
portioned There must be no more
OF this X cards for congressman
stuff.
2. Price ceilings must be rigid
II enforced If bootlegging and
black marketing of scarce supplies
are permitted to start. not only
initiation will develop. but chaos
as we'll
! g. Every income group must be
equitably taxed and assessed for
savings. There can be no class ex-
emptions. States which now permit
husbands and wives to file separate
income tax returns in order to
escape the higher surtaX rates of
a joint return are simply allowing
their citizens to welch on ma
tional responsibility.
COST 40 PER CENT
What this full responsibility
amounts to, according to some of
the government economists who are
planning for the management of
your wartime standard of living,
is that the average family in the
next IL months must be prepared
to set aside some 40 per cent of
| its income for taxes and savings.
That is an unprecedented amount.
Before the war, any suggestion that
the American people could set aside
40 cents out of every dollar would
have been considered preposterouS.
The way this works out for
the average person now is
something like this:
With total national income for
the coming year estimated at SIT
billion, to be divided among about
1870 million people, that makes the
gross per capita income around
5000 year. Put 40 per cent of tHat
-S360-in savings and taxes, and
it leaves $40 year for the per
capita spending money which will
/ be left for the necessities on this
government-managed standard Of
living.
Bear in mind that these are
average figures. Some people
will be considerably above those
averages. A lot more people will
be way below them. Also bear
in mind that these are aver
ages per person, man, woman
or child. To fit them to a fam
lily, multiply those per capita
figures by the number of pe0-
pic i'm your family.
For an average family of three
mama, papa and the baby-it
would work out as an income of
S2700 a year. with 5000 of it 60
ing into savings and taxes and
$500 of it left for the family to
squander.
SAME QUANTITY
What kind of standard of liv-
ing do you get for this money?
In general, the idea is to give
you about the same quantity of
food, fuel and shelter that you
enjoyed in the past, with certain
obvious exceptions and certain To-
cal shortages in various areas Su-
gar and probably most of the i'm
ported footStuffS like coffee and
tea and bananas will be down in
consumption generally. And in de-
ense areas and war production
centers where there have been big
and sudden increases in population,
shelter accommodations will be re-
duced.