The Daily Alaska empire., 1951-04-12
T H E s E D AY S By GEORGE E. SOKOLSKY
The WiIted White-collar

troducing a bill into Congress to rescue the profession workers of this country from permanent pov- erty. For precisely that fate faces lawyers, doctors, architects, writers and others, who no matter what they earn, are being squeezed be- tween taxes and high prices, with out any opportunity to save for the future.
 Couderts bill is to aid those men and women who are not eligible as beneficiaries of corporate or other private pension plans. These plans are really savings. For instance, was recently looking at the card of a Sears, Roebuck file clerk who had been with that company many years and, as I calculated it, she has saved, through their plan, SsG.- coo. I would not mira being a file clerk with such savings.
 Professional men, writers, artists, farmers and small business men are now unable to make great savings, unless they swindle, because of taxes which are geared against them. Coudert's idea is to permit the postponement of Federal taxes as regards portion of their earned net income, so that the amount Of money shall be contributed as a restricted retirement fund.
 The worst phase of this situation, as it affects professional men, wri- ters and artists, is that their earn ings are up and down, lot one year and not so much another year. If they could keep their earn ings, they could average out over few years. But the way it is, writer may earn a fortune in one year and get taxed for the full amount in that year, and then he does not earn for a few years and is broke.
 The treasury amortizes mach ines; why not men?
 Coudert says:
 "It is of utmost importance to encourage young men to enter the professions and small business ven- lures. Yet the operations of the present tax laws, instead of giving this encouragement, tend to do the exact opposite by making corpor- ation employment more attractive to young men. I believe this to be against the public interest"
 I tried to read the sCoudert bill and, like all other acts of Congress dealing with taxation, it gets so involved that you have to hire a lawyer and an accountant to dis cover how it works. But it is enough for me that it gives to the white-collar folks a chance to put aside something of their earnings for the day when the joints ache and the hand is shaky and the eyes are not so good.
 Even columnists lose their pop ularity after a while, and some even lose their limited good years. I, for instance, started in this bus- mess in 1917. I have, I hope, worked hard at my trade, which involves voluminous reading, the cultivation of memory, travel in many parts of the world, and some small, unheroic element of risk.
 In our business, young person is hired on the general assumption that he knows nothing. Then for 10 or l5 years, he keeps on learn- ing the hard way, his product ap- bearing in black ink on white pa- per for all to see.
 So our hero arrives. But so has Uncle Sam. He tells his wife that he is now big shot, but she wants to know how it happens that E. Merl Young's wife grabs $9,540 mink coat while she has to wear mouton. which is fancy for sheep skin. Our genius tells her to go fight the treasury. Well, maybe there are ten wonderful years, during which the great man sits on the dais and rises for a bow and then up comes another young fellow and pushes him into the back pages. So there is nothing to do but to become a ghost writer.
 But savings! There are none ex- cept what Uncle Sam gave to the British to bridge their dollar gap