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University Daily Kansan Wednesday. Jan. 13, 1954
Big Social Security BattleLoomsAhead
In the President's State of the Union speech last week he said he favored the extension of Social Security legislation to include almost 10.000 more people.
This is actually nothing new, as he has favored this plan since the campaign over two years ago. Also there is a piece of legislation pending that the Republicans proposed in the 83rd Congress.
This legislation, basically the same plan the President outlined, would include:
1 Broadening coverage to include 10.5 million self-employed farmers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, architects, and engineers.
2. Liberalizing of Social Security benefits.
4. Freezing the tax rate at $1\frac{1}{2}$ per cent on both employer and employee to prevent anymore step-ups as the Jan. 1 increase from $1\frac{1}{2}$ to 2 per cent. This would require retroactive legislation.
3. Shifting from reserve financing system to a pay-as-you-go plan.
Republicans and big businessmen argue that present coverage is incomplete and provides an excuse for Socialist state old-age relief.
At present there are about 66 million people protected by the plan. However, the real battle over the legislation will arise over points three and four.
They also claim that this would eliminate the relief programs which through the states cost $1.5 billion each year.
Democrats and labor forces, on the other hand, claim the new proposals are a part of a plan to wreck Social Security. They add that relief has no part in Social Security.
Labor forces claim that the proposed tax freeze would result only in a cut for the employer at the expense of the trust fund.
The trust fund was established by Congress to bridge the gap between taxes paid in and benefits collected. The money in the trust fund annually collects about $2 \frac{1}{4}$ per cent interest.
When legislation passed in 1940 the plan was to raise the 1 per cent tax on wages on each group until it would level off around 1970 at $6_{2}$ per cent of payroll or $3_{4}$ per cent on the employer and the employe.
An estimate said the rate could reach $8 \frac{1}{2}$ per cent of payroll in 2025 if it continues as it has continued in the past.
There are many loopholes in the present plan. For example, before Jan. 1, 1951, a person getting the benefits received $65 a month and could add to this amount whatever he could earn each month.
The 1951 change raised the amount to $100 a month but limited any extra income to $75 a month. This has caused many hard feelings because those people having income from investments could still draw both the $100 and their interest so long as they weren't working at a job.
There have been many ways people have taken advantage of the law and gotten around the law but they are too numerous to mention here. The fact remains that the legislation now in force is not satisfactory with either Republicans or Democrats.
Changing it will be a difficult thing. In the last session of Congress all the Social Security debates were too complicated for the senators and representatives to understand.
There was only testimony from experts. In most cases the congressmen were at a loss as to what they wanted or were getting.
Whatever happens in the next session of Congress it will take a lot of explaining before passage. —Ken Cov
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"Not so much pepper, Worthal, Not soo—Ah—much—Ah-ha-pep-ah—"
THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN POLITICS. By Samuel Lubell. New York: Harper. 1952. 261
BOOKS: Lubell's Political Outlook Rated Sound Any Year
Lubell treats eight significant trends that are remaking the politics of today. The trends, and some conclusions he has drawn, follow:
A political tract that appeared prior to either the nomination or election of Dwight D. Eisenhower might seem to be pretty dated stuff. But the fact is that "The Future of American Politics" is a sound appraisal of the political scene in any year. Samuel Lubell's analysis of what likely would occur if the Republicans nominated Eisenhower is brilliant. He erred only in his flat prediction that an Eisenhower nomination would cause a complete southern walkout at the Democratic convention. The southerners did walk out, but not until election time.
1. The simultaneous "coming of age" of the various urban "minorities," which has transformed the nature of machine politics and thrust the old-time political boss on the defensive in a desperate struggle for political survival. Political allegiances have changed drastically in the past few years, resulting in the inability of the bosses to "deform" the votes they once "once" strongly pro-Democratic Catholics are becoming Republican. The Negro is voting as he chooses—but usually Democratic. One-time immigrant groups are leaving their ghettoes for newer and better sections of the American city.
2. The rise of a new middle class, conservative in the manner of all middle classes, yet with its political attitudes rooted in memories of discrimination, poverty and the Great Depression. Here are the persons who once might have been fair game for the Communists, but now arising "from" the proletariat instead of arising "with" it. Included at times to become conservatively Republican, they often identify the Republican party with hard times, while at the same time identifying the Democratic party with war and vast government spending.
3. The Negro in restless migration and the conflict of tension versus tolerance which he touches off wherever he appears. Once a problem for the South to settle by itself, civil rights is now a national problem and cannot be turned over to those who plead state's rights. Whereas the Negro once had a new frontier—the North, he now has no frontier except the better neighborhoods, and when he tries that frontier, such incidents as the shameful Cicero, Ill., riots of a few years ago occur.
4. The quickening economic revolution in the South, which has altered the dynamics of southern sectionalism to where it has become a pressure for political unification with the rest of the nation. The政治 change arising in the South has been occasioned in part by industry, in part by the growth of the Republican party, in part by identification of old-line Dixiecrats with
Daily Transan
Member of the Kansas Press Assn., National Editorial Assn. Inland Daily Press Association, and National Advertising Representation by the National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Avenue, N.Y. City. Mail Subscription rates: $3 a semester or less (or $5 for renewal). Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturday, July 14, through August 18 examination periods. Entered second class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., Post Office under act
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Republican beliefs, Where radicalism is frequently a characteristic of change in political thinking, it is conservatism in the South.
5. The abrupt upheaval in world strategy, with the collapse of German and Japanese power, and which has eliminated the old basis of American isolationism and yet, paradoxically, has strengthened it as a vengeful memory. While the world apparently has become "smaller," memories of America fighting the Germans in two wars remains as a strong factor in the thinking of ethnic groups throughout the country, groups which in the late 1830s were closely allied with the America First movement, and with others.
Executive Editor         Ken Coy
Managing Editors        Ed Oward,
Manager Tie, Dean Tce, Mary
News Editor             Shirley Platt
Assistant                Tom Shannon
Sports Editor           Stan Hamilton
Ky Brown                Letty Lemon
Society                 Letty Lemon
Assistant               Elizabeth Wohlgemuth
Feature Exchange Ed.     Sam Tesford
Management Editor       Andy
NEWS STAFF
6. The quiet, yet fundamental, change that has taken place in the farmer's relationship to the town, which bars any return to the farm politics of the 1920's. The farmer has remained Democratic, despite widespread opinion that he fluctuates according to prosperity. Midwestern Republican strength remains not on the farm itself, but on Main Street. But, paradoxically, much of the Midwest "farm belf" swing to Truman in 1948 was from one-time isolationists who were free of the yoke of Roosevelt.
—RD
The growth of organized labor to unprecedented financial and membership strength and yet, with it ironically, has come an ebbing of labor's political vitality. The rank and file of labor does not necessarily hold that the Taft-Hartley law is a slave labor statute. Even within labor there are grumblings against the growth in power of labor bosses. The 1950 labor swing in Ohio against the Democratic party was partly protest against bossism. Labor is no longer answering to a "reveille for radicals," but is becoming conservative.
Business Mgr. Ed Smith
Retail Adv. Mgr. Jane Megaflin
National Adv. Mgr. Ann Ainsworth
Susine Bean Susan Bean
Circulation Mgr. Minx River
Promotion Mgr. Gordon Ross
Bus. Advisor Gene Bratton
BUSINESS STAFF
8. The impact of the cold war upon the so-called Warfare State, which has veered the conflict over the role of government into new, still dimly perceived channels. Only a Republican victory could prove to posterity the permanence of New Deal legislation, for the Republicans would be bound to preserve some social and economic gains of the past 20 years. Within the Republican may be found many liberals who agree easily with Democratic doctrine. The political deadlock that has long gripped America cannot be broken by a single Republican victory.
EDITORIAL STAFF
Editorial Editor
Assistants
Clarke Keys
Joseph Keenan
Chuck Morlock
FIRE AND THE HAMMER. By Shirley Barker (Crown) is a melancholy tale of folly, futility and final fruition in the days of the American Revolution—the semi-historic sage of the murderous Doans who couldn't distinguish between freedom and anarchy; and Lass
Into the framework of this wild history Shirley Barker has introduced Lass Marvayne, daughter of a Massachusetts blockade runner, whose love for Mahlon Doan—the "runt of the litter"—made her willing to betray family, fance and country.
Marvayne, who loved beyond all reason.
History records that there were six Doans in Pemmyslana's Bucks county in the 1770's, five brothers and a cousin. Their private rebellion began as a civil-disobedience campaign against war taxes, under the "fire and hammer" of their Quaker conviction, but it soon developed into conspiracy banditry, canton locking and treason against Pemmyslana and the infant United States. It ended with three Doans dead and three in flight.
Miss Barker, whose other books include the well-remembered Rivers Parting, is a poet as well as an author. Her prose style is characterized by a rhythmic sweep and a keen talent for detail that serves admirably to bring to life a turbulent tale set against the background of Trenton, Valley Forge and occupied Philadelphia. . .
Joyce Carey, hailed by many as the best British writer today, takes another unsentimental but perceptive look at life in his latest novel, Except The Lord (Harper).
This time Cary focuses on the childhood of Chester Nimmo, son of a stableman in the West Country of England and the central character in an earlier Cary tale, Prisoner of Grace. How Chester swings away from his father's strict evangelical teaching into a pinkish adventure with a dock workers' union, and how the resulting family and community pressures shape the lad for the political career ahead of him is Cary's story.
In the telling of it, Cary also etches sharp character studies of Richard, the book-loving dreamer brother; Georgina, scheming but pixyish sister and the father, unbending in moral beliefs but forgiving of human failures.
Short Ones
Latest game being played on the campus: Guess which of the six doors at the Union is open this time.
Terry Moore's ermine swimming suit is being put into moth balls. That's OK. We're not particularly how we see her.
. . .
A college queen wins a week's vacation just across the bay from her Miami home and the Daily Kansan is thinking of offering a trip to Eudora for a lucky contest winner.
POGO