The Ely miner., 1943-09-30
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PATTERSON
MUSTERING-OUT PAY
AND A TAX IDEA
Released by Western Newspaper Union.


job, sounds good but in reality is it
more than a kindly gesture?
At an average of $500 for each
man the total would be around three
billions of dollars. That three bill
lions must be paid by the American
taxpayers which will include the
men who served in the armed forces.
We propose to give to each OF them,
say $500, and then over the years,
take all of it and more away from
them in the form of income taxes.
The mustering-out process will be
gradual. The men will not all be
discharged as soon as the war Is
over. There will be q world police
job to be done and a goodly per-
centage of American soldiers will
want a place in that job. In that
gradual process of mastering out
peacetime industry will absorb most
of those who need or want jobs.
The men of the armed forces are
young. The greater portion of them
unmarried. Practically all of them
have homes where they will be well
coined. They will have ample op-
portunity and time to look for jobs.
AS the years pass these young men
will assume ever-increasing respon-
sibilities. They will have homes and
families of their own. A percentage
of them will succeed to point
where they will not need special con-
sideration. A much larger percent
age will not secure above, and many
of them will be below, the average
annual income. To these larger
numbers some help year by year
would be of far greater value than
a $500 cash payment when given a
discharge.
A graduated income tax reduction
to all veterans of World War II
would provide a year by year COM
pensation in proportion to their
needs. Taxes for many years to
come will be heavy. They will not
drop much, if any, below 20 per
cent of income in the lower brack-
cts. If the veteran, whose tax would
be $50 a year, had to pay but $40
it would be a big help year after
year. The graduation to be such so
the veteran who had succeeded
financially would have, at least, no
greater total exemption than the one
who had not.
Such an income tax reduction
would, over the years, amount to
much more than the suggested $500.
1t would come at a time when it
would, for the great majority, be
more needed than at the muster-out
date. It would mean that those who
fought the war for us would not,
through the years, be forced to pay
as much of the cost as those OF US
who did not share with them the
dangers and hazards and trials of
the battlefronts. It would be more
than a gesture.
INDUSTRY'S SHARE
OF BUSINESS INCOME
WHAT PORTION of the receipts
of industry does labor receive as
its dividend from the partnership
of labor, capital and management?
Including the cost of the labor in
volved in the production of raw ma
terials and transportation, together
with the direct payrolls of the steel
plants, labor, in 1912, received as
it's share just about 70 cents out Of
each dollar of steel sales. Of the
other 80 cents taxes took over six
cents of each dollar sale. The hun
dred thousand and more stockhold-
ers, who provide the tools and build
ings and working capital, received
less than four cents of each sales
dollar as a dividend, on which they
paid income taxes. After paying the
cost of material and transportation,
exclusive of the labor involved, and
paying management, there was nine
cents of each sales dollar left to pro-
vide for a rainy day. 1t would seem
that labor gets fair share.
BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY
SOME MONTHS AGO dropped
into a food market and was i'm
pressed by two things. One was that
/ was the only prospective customer
at what was usually a busy hour in
a food market. The other was a
number of signs displayed on the
walls. One sign read: "Your credit
is not good" Another: "Our busi-
ness is to sell, not to visit" A third:
eff you do not like what we have,
buy elsewhere" There were others
of similar slap-in-the-face char
acter. I did not buy and it was my
first and only visit to that store.
Those signs told the reason for a
lack of customers. The store has
since been closed by the sheriff and
the one-time owner condemns the
public for failure to patronize a
home institution. He was not a stu
dent of psychology.
WHEN 1T has all been boiled
down, all the useless verbiage re-
moved, the thing the American sol
dier, sailor or marine is fighting for
is freedom to improve the opportu-
nifty his country and its way of life
offer him.
FOR THE NEXT several years
the planning" job of the agricul-
tural department will call for pro-
ducing more food, rather than less.
We once paid a bonus for not raising
hogs; possibly we should now pay
for raising them.
THE NEWSPAPER EDITOR who
L L
his community, his state and his
nation is the one in whom the public
has confidence. 1t is that public con-
fidence which makes for newspaper
success.