Slouch
By Jim Earle
mn~
ArtLt^ -**
£Ai-i-e
“Actually my political position is to the left of Reagan; to the
right of Carter; oblique with Connally; behind Anderson;
adjacent to Baker and above Stassen. “
Opinion
The NCAA: a paper tiger?
The National Collegiate Athletic Association it seems has
very little interest in enforcing its admirable regulations.
When asked recently if the NCAA was aware that half of the
schools in the Southwest Conference had special admission
requirements for athletes, a spokesman replied, “No one
has complained to us about that matter.”
Vice president Clements?
Lord help us all. In a day when Bill Clements can be
considered, however remotely, for the GOP vice presiden
tial nomination, we are in trouble.
Both Ronald Reagan and George Bush are scheduled to
campaign throughout the state next week, wooing support
for the May 3 primary. And, since Clements is still the
biggest big-wig the Republicans we have in this state (which
says something about the condition of the Texas GOP), they
will pay him courtesy calls.
And there is talk that one of the subjects they will discuss
is giving the governor a shot at the running-mate spot.
Let’s hope it’s just talk. Anyone who’s lived in this state
since Clements took over the Governor’s Mansion knows
about Big Bill.
Here is a man who suggested that deep-sea diving could
be used as a birth control measure for pregnant women.
Here is a man who told us that the Mexican oil spill wasn’t
all that bad.
Here is a man who said the hostages in Iran are “expend
able.”
Bill Clements has proved again and again that he is as
stupid as he is obnoxious. And the whole idea of putting this
cretin within a heartbeat of the presidency is equally as
stupid and obnoxious.
the
small society
by Brickman
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The Battalion
U S P S 045 360
LETTERS POLICY MEMBER
Lfttrr. to (JW nfaor mot mod 300 word, omd . 1”**
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edOarwl nofl mrrro tlw nfkt to rdo me*, Utter, mol Editor Roy Bragg
dot, mot tmomtee to pmhitd, Utter toe*. Utter moo, Associate Editor Keith Taylor
W mecmrd dww the oddrtu of t*w wetter omd bet • News Editor Rusty Cawley
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JSr Copy Editor • ■ DilWd Su»e
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Keprrwmed mohnrwSh by NatfcmJ v»*»r Focus Editor Rhonda Watters
(Mas Screen, be.. N«-« Tori C«y. ch»rae> mod Lot Viewpoint Pa|je Editor Tim Sager
A Tin
City Editor Louie Arthur
TV Vruhnn n pubWd Momby throwsb Fridoy from Campus Editor Diane Blake
V^trwVT iVoo^ May nc«pi ibnaa rwo rod bobbv staff Writers Nano Andersen.
* * T^. Bn.oh^.Aoyoliquo Cooelnd.
... _ „ _ Laura Cortez, Merit Edwards.
Carol Hancock. Kathleen McElroy.
f.1 lOtnt OO rwfmmt KMrrx, TV Botuinn Room 216 Debbie Nelson. Richard Oliver,
%md HcOmmid ■ ■■>*■». Colnpr Sotuo Toai 77M3 Steve Sisoey. Becky Swanson.
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Viewpoint
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Thursday
April 24, 1980
Value added tax is no panacea
for America’s troubled econom
By WILLIAM KEEGAN
International Writers Service
LONDON — Americans considering the
idea of a value added tax might learn some
thing from the British experience. Try it,
by all means, but don’t fool yourself that it
will solve all your problems.
The value added tax, or VAT, was intro
duced here in Britian in the early 1970s. It
has been widely used elsewhere in Europe
for years, and, its partisans claimed, it
would perform wonders.
As its name implies, VAT consists of
levying a tax on the value added to goods
and services at each stage of production and
ditribution. In other words, when a partial
ly finished item is sold, the tax is paid on its
entire value at that point, with the seller
receiving credit for all the taxes paid at
earlier stages of production.
In the end, the consumer pays the full tax
— which in a sense makes VAT similar to a
sales tax.
American advocates of VAT, such as
Rep. Al Ullman of Oregon, contend that is
will permit cuts in income and social secur
ity taxes by providing the revenue lost
through those cuts. Moreover, he sub
mits, it will encourage investment, pro
ductivity, exports and price stability by
shifting the tax burden from income to
consumption.
Many of the same arguments were ad
vanced here a decade ago by champions of
VAT. Since then, the tax has proven to be
neither a disaster nor a panacea. Above
all, it has not contributed to a dramatic
improvement of Britain’s ailing economy,
mention its complex system of charges and
rebates, VAT is essentially a form of nation
al sales tax on consumer expenditures. Un
like the old purchase tax it replaced, which
set levies of up to 33 percent on luxuries,
VAT features a standard rate of 15 percent.
Compared to the former system, too,
VAT encompasses a broader range, since it
includes the services sector. At the same
time, though, it omits large areas of con
sumption.
For instance, items like food and chil
dren’s clothing are exempted. Otherwise,
the new tax would have been extremely
regressive, hitting the poorest households
the hardest. Altogether, in fact, VAT affects
only about half of total consumer spending.
Many of its vaunted virtues have failed to
materialize. It has not, for example, dam
pened consumption and spurred invest
ment. Nor does the fact that it is levied on
imports but not exports made any tangible
difference in Britian’s foreign trade.
In addition, VAT is expensive to admi
nister because of its complicated structure.
It also facilitates fraud, since professionals
and craftsmen are tempted to compete for
lients by quoting fees without tax.
Despite thee reservations, however,
VAT has an enormous advantage that was
not originally emphasized in the debate
over the subject years ago. It is useful to
governments in the present economic con
text because the tax is proportional and
therefore its yields rise automatically with
inflation.
This is preferable to fixed taxes, such as
those imposed here on ci ea r«
tobacco, which are actually d
value as living costs soar. Tbe-
agonizes every year over wheth
such taxes and thereby sendther
index up.
Here in Britain between 1969a
government revenues gained •
indirect taxes fell by nearly in!
Partly to redress the balance Pn
ter Margaret Thatcher’s Consent
ernment raised VAT from 8 pen*!
percent when it presented iMn ,
last June.
That jump had a devasting eW
prices, boosting them by almost4,,
and aggravting Britain’s already st"
flation problem. The increase B
meanwhile achieved relatively littif
it accounts for only about one*
British tax revenues.
The lesson for Americans who cm
plate a U.S. version of VAT oue
clear. It will not create miracles y
that matter, will any fiscal remedv
Mlifm-GWyMPTtm
The devil Carfer is
really threatening tp
tighten the screws on us.
AH
th
Th
Soph Tucker’s economic primer
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Economists are pre
dicting that the recession they were pre
dicting last year will arrive later this year, if
it hasn’t already started or isn’t delayed
again.
The coinciding of these forecasts with the
new census reminds us that for a large seg
ment of the population the prospective re
cession amounts to facing the unknown.
Our economy has been on the upswing
so long that millions of Americans have
never known anything else. Understand
ably, they are more apprehensive than
those who have been through previous
downturns. You can see their anxieties re
flected in the popularity of such books as
"HowTo Prosper During The Coming Bad
Years.”
As it happens, I was never able to pros
per even during the good years. I am,
however, one of the few people alive today
who is old enough to remember what it was
like during the Great Depression. There
fore, my counsel and guidance are in con
stant demand.
In the gloaming recently, I was a-sitting’
and a-rockin’ out on the veranda when Ber
tie and Fancy Clanker, a young couple who
lives down the street, stopped by.
“Is it true you are one of the survivors of
the Great Depression?” Bertie asked shyly.
“Yew dem tootin’,” I cackled, slapping
my knee.
(When you reach my age, you start drop
ping letters off the end of words and replac
ing them with apostrophes. This helps save
your breath for more important things, like
breathin’.
(You also tend to cackle a lot. That gives
you a cover for slapping your knee to keep
the circulation going.)
The Clankers asked if they might sit at
my feet for a while and drink in any wisdom
I might impart on how to cope with the
coming hard times.
I gathered up a mouthful for apostrophes
and said, “The best thing to do is put your
life savin’s into mattresses.”
Fancy Clanker pulled a note pad out of
her purse.
“Are mattresses safer than banks when
times are hard?”
“Not necessarily,” I replied, “but they
pay better interest.”
Fancy erased something shel
down.
“What is the main difference
recession and inflation? Bertie i
“Durin’ inflation, you have i
can’t buy things because prices >
high. Durin’ recessions, the Pjj cfl j
down but you have no money^ 1
Bertie gave a thoughtful nod I
I’m getting the feel of it, he sad
It’s a pity the Clankers and or"
couples never knew Sophia Tu
Last of the Red Hot Mommas. ■> 1
say before she cooled off mat !,
poor and I’ve been rich, and,
rich is better.”
If Miss Tucker were
probably would be chairman w |
dent’s Council of Economic A
TTERS
U. S Constitution not based on the Bible
Editor:
I would like to respond to the speech
made April 21 by Mr. Ron Tewson. He
expounded that the Constitution was writ
ten with the Bible as a text, and that our
founders meant for the government they
were creating to be Christian. Therefore,
our present society is breaking up because
we have thrown the Bible and its principles
out
These statements are very broad gener
alizations. That the U.S. government was
framed using the Bible as a text is simply
not true. The majority of the men who
contributed to the Constitution were not
Christian. Benjamin Franklin was a Deist.
So was Thomas Jefferson. George
W'ashington was Anglican, but did not
admit any particular creed. Deism was the
reigning philosophy of the times, and held
that reason was the road to God. and was
skeptical of religion.
The political philosophers that influ
enced the writing of the Constitution were
a product of the Enlightenment, of which
Christians were a minority. John Locke was
Christian, Voltaire was atheist, and Mon
tesquieu had to answer to charges of reli
gious unorthodoxy for his Spirit of the
Laws, on which our Constitution is based.
As a conclusion, the speaker mentioned
several times “one nation under God,” im
plying that this was a major concept written
into the Constitution. These words come
from the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, and the
phrase “under God" was not added until
1954
Sbisa strikes again!
wouldn’t lose so much to waste
I close only by saying that Mr. Tewson
and his sponsors should he extremely
embarrassed by his presentation, which
claimed to be “intellectually and academic
ally honest. ” Please. Mr. Tewson. whenev
er you speak again , do not do such a sloppy-
job of representing my Lord.
Beverly A. Dowdy
Editor:
I am writing in response to Mr. Dennis
M. McGuimes’s April 16 memo to all
Northgate students. Mr. McGuime sent
this memo to explain why he re-arranged
the tables and deprived us of desserts in
that illustrious dining hall. Mr. McGuime
has attempted to turn all Northgate dorms
against Davis-Gary as a scapegoat for this
action.
Mr McGuime, I really don’t care how
the tables are arranged. As for the de
sserts, I thank you.
vruuiuil l 1U3C -- ,t--j
telling us that compared to
we eat well. I don t go to an)
and I still don t eat well.
$500 per semester for rancid ^
can anyone screw up catsup'/^|
tuce and a variety of devast*®* _
chicken. On top of that I spend ^
Vninrlr^H mnrf* to keep
hundred more to keep
min in business.
So you go ahead and keep P*£
excellent service. It shouldn
Yo«!
since there’s no competition
and keep closing up at£30*^
t~wn mom rlnrms will DU ,
You tell us that you try to provide your
customers with the best service possible on
your limited budget. Is that why you raise
the price of the board plan each semester
and blame it on us wasting "food.” You
don’t seem to understand. If you made
something edible for a change, you
“meals” of yours next year.
But L*
that! 1
refose to give you money
for any longer. Furthermore.‘j
place blame on a fellow o° "
brought on only by the
upon them by poor service,
lousy food. Bfin