Is the U.S. Going Broke?

Sir / TIME'S cover story [March 13] completely misses the point. The solution of the Government deficit problem is not to raise taxes but to cut costs.

Not by skimping on essential services, but by canceling nonessential services and jobs and by reducing pay scales to a point where the public is able and willing to pay. In short, for Government to do what any business concern caught in a fiscal squeeze must do to survive.

Why cannot TIME, instead of plugging for a still heavier tax burden, acquaint its readers with the major increases in Government costs since the real trouble began about 1967?

RICHARD A. DOUGLAS

Loudonville, N.Y.

Sir/Is the U.S. going broke? No, the U.S. is broke!

EDMUND LLOYD

Middletown, N.Y.

Sir / Having myself cited Justice Holmes' dictum that taxes are the price of civilization, I agree with you that our unwillingness to pay more than token taxes leaves us a good deal short on civilization.

However, despite the reasonableness of your arguments, I must demur that I simply cannot afford further exactions. The reason is that I need all my money (and more) so that I may acquire what I see in your magazine:

A trip to Bermuda (p. 4); a Peugeot (p. 5); the LIFE Library of Photography (p. 8); an Emerson Permacolor television set (p. 11); a sterling silver Sheaffer pen (p. 12); a General Electric Potscrubber dishwasher (p. 25); Seagram's Crown Royal (p. 26); flying with Jo on National Airlines (pp. 41-42a); some De Beers Consolidated diamonds (p. 56); a Kodak Carousel projector (p. 76); and a Gran Torino Hardtop with bucket seats, vinyl roof, wheel trim rings and white sidewalls (back cover).

ANDREW HACKER

New York City

Sir / Kudos to Economists Pechman and Heller for theorizing solutions to our public service woes through major adjustments of taxes and expenditures. Now all we need is a sequel in your Behavior section telling us how our politicians can be psyched into proposing and passing the enabling legislation.

SIDNEY A. LEUBE

Corvallis, Ore.

Sir / The U.S. taxpayer is rebelling against the way the tax money is spent. In large cities, the amount of money that is wasted and misspent is appalling. The taxpayer sees working people driven from the city by high rents, while tax money is spent to build new housing for welfare recipients. He sees huge sums of money misappropriated and stolen each year by public officials. He sees more of his taxes being spent on criminals and drug addicts than he can afford to spend on his own family.

SYLVIA SCHUMAN

New York City

Sir /1 take exception to your cover story, in which you imply that teachers have easy work and short hours. Teaching is a demanding profession. I do not know of many persons employed by private industry who consistently bring home work night after night. While it is true that teachers' salaries have been rising, so has the quality of American education.

OWEN F. GAEDE

Little York, Ill.

Sir/The problem of "Empty Pockets. . ."can be solved by a simple reordering of priorities: schools before bombers, houses before missiles, hospitals before napalm. The multibillion-dol-lar defense budget is what's killing us. With defense like this, who needs enemies?

BEN CALDERONE

Levittown, N.Y.

Madness Cult

Sir / I feel compelled to disagree that thinking has become a bad habit [Essay, "The New Cult of Madness," March 13].

Quite to the contrary, the exact opposite is taking place--people are really thinking for once. The Viet Nam War is clearly a product of nonthinking. Surely if Americans had been thinking we would never have entered Viet Nam. Furthermore, pollution, poverty, bad housing, and all the other various diseases this country is infested with are all products of nonthinking.

Today youth is thinking, and it has finally resulted in the closing down of the Viet Nam War, attacks on pollution, demands for better housing, investigations into corporations, etc. This truly is the beginning of the thinking generation.

GREG FREEDMAN

Lexington, Ky.

Sir / If TIME'S Essay is an indication of reasoned thinking, then the line between reason and unreason must be slight.

LISSA SCHWARTZ

Chicago

Sir / Relevant to the Essay, Ortega y Gasset also noted, "For plant, animal or star to live is to have no doubts concerning its own being. None of them has to decide what it will be the next instant--thus their life is not drama, but evolution. But man's life is exactly the opposite --it is having to decide every moment what he must do the next moment and therefore having to discover the very design of his being." So it seems we have no choice but to continue to make choices, and how can we make choices without thinking? By choosing not to choose? Then we are truly all doomed.

(MRS.) SYLVIA TERRELL

Los Angeles

Sir / Congratulations on your fine article. We mystics and anti-reason advocates, priests, devils and the like have ruled the world for many centuries, interrupted only by such inconveniences as the Renaissance. Aristotle gave us a bad time when he identified the rational intellect as man's greatest possession, but now, with your help, and with today's philosophers and intellectuals behind us, we will assume our rightful place on the throne of rule by guilt, fear and superstition.

WILLIAM WEDDELL

Pinehaven, New Zealand

Muskie's Tears

Sir / In regard to Senator Muskie's recent display of emotion [March 13], surely there must be something irrational about a society that deems it a sign of weakness when a man is moved to tears when publicly defending a value he holds dear.

I cannot help but feel that if more tears were shed for the cruelty, suffering and inhumanity we stoically seem to take for granted in this world, something meaningful might be done to eliminate them.

RONALD D. REMBAUM

Turners Falls, Mass.

Sir / Who knows, maybe crying on TV was part of Muskie's campaign strategy. Nixon did it when he was Eisenhower's running mate, and look where he is now.

DEAN P. BLANCHETTE

Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Sir / Senator Muskie's lachrymal performance in New Hampshire suggests a slogan the Republicans might use this election year: "Beat Muskie, for Crying Out Loud!"

KENNETH D. SCHROEDER

Columbia, Md.

Sir / That Senator Muskie cried in public is proof positive that he would be a poor presidential choice. Doesn't he know that crying not only is unnatural and inefficient, but it also will cause him to rust severely? Someone had better tell him soon in order to stop the ugly rumor that the U.S. turns out human presidential candidates.

WILLIAM B. POWELL Medford, Ore.

Portuguese Aid

Sir / The "Innocuousness Abroad" article [Feb. 14] reported that the U.S. abstained on a U.N. vote because it called for the denial of arms for use in Portuguese Africa. This is simply not true. The U.S. has not supplied any arms for such use since 1961. The fact is that we abstained because the resolution as drafted would not contribute to peaceful progress toward the goal of self-determination for the peoples of Portuguese Africa.

The same article stated that "Washington recently signed an agreement with Lisbon promising it nearly $500 million worth of aid, part of which is in military supplies." This refers to the agreement in connection with the extension of American basing rights in the Azores. What we did was to offer the loan of a research vessel, a grant of $1,000,000 for education, $5,000,000 in nonmilitary surplus equipment, and PL-480 credits of $30 million for the export of surplus agricultural commodities. Export-Import Bank financing may also be available. The $400 million figure frequently mentioned in this connection relates only to projects under consideration by the Portuguese, no commitment having been made by the U.S. as to amount. "Military supplies" are nowhere included in the assistance package.

MARTIN J. HILLENBRAND

Assistant Secretary for European Affairs Department of State Washington, D.C.

Therapy in Verse

Sir /1 read with interest and great concern your article "Poetry Therapy" [March 13].

Those of us who care about our language, in spite of all the abuse that is heaped upon it, those of us who care about poetry cannot but deplore this new violation of our craft.

Verse without feeling is not poetry but feeling without craft is not poetry, either. Which is not to say that some of the products of this new "therapy" cannot be poetry, but therapy and art are two very different things.

Society has consistently expected its artists to be neurotics. Now it seems society expects its neurotics to be artists.

MARGARET CLARKE TORRES

Verona, N.J.

Sir/In connection with the article "Poetry Therapy," to all budding poets I suggest that at times it would be more prudent and profitable not to send their verses to poetry editors, but rather to psychiatrists. Mine included.

DOMINIC L. SCOCCOLA

Cleveland

Bus View

Sir / Thank you for your story "The View from the Bus" [March 13]. This is to me the heart of integrated school experiences--that those involved, i.e., the students, will learn, given time and little interference, how to live in a multiethnic world. Thirteen-year-old John Kindig gets my vote for "Human of the Year." With youth like him, we may make it--if he can only teach the rest of us, in time, what it's all about.

(MRS.) ELIZABETH HARMAN

Atlanta

Marantology

Sir / May I commend your article on the right to die, "Specialty for Losers" [March 13]. However, I do protest the term losers. At 87 I am, like Dr. Poe, old enough to figure how I'd like to be treated. I feel that I am a winner and that my victory would be marred by any inappropriate delay in presenting the award.

(THE REV.) FRANK ATKINSON

West Palm Beach, Fla.

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