Cheer Up

Do you look back on America the Beautiful with nostalgia? On the full-value dollar with an empty feeling in your wallet? Well, you shouldn't. To do so is to submit to "sentimentality, prejudice and myopia," according to Herbert Stein, 56, chairman of President Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers. Speaking before an audience of bankers, businessmen and educators in Richmond last week, Stein denounced critics of the President's new budget for their negative vibrations.

People were wasting their "tears" over cuts in various programs, he said. "The welfare state is not being liquidated," and unemployment, though a problem, occurs largely among the young, and therefore does not have the same "misery component" as it used to.

The environment? That, said Stein, is a "stunning example" of fuzzy thinking by which "anything that improves the environment is also a good thing, regardless of cost." Said Stein, "In today's world, if you can look about you and see that things are pretty good, you're not fit to be an editorial writer for the New York Times, my son." Standing a cliche on its head, Stein announced: "Today it is the bearer of good news who is in danger." Duck, Mr. Stein.

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