Taxes, Taxes
To the Editors:
In your story "The Biggest Challenge" [Jan. 19], Lester C. Thurow, a member of the TIME Board of Economists, criticizes the Kemp-Roth tax cuts. He says "the average American saves 4% of his income and consumes 96%." He doesn't mention that the Government takes 30% of the middle-class income, leaving the remainder to be consumed by the banks for mortgages, the oilman for heat, the utilities, not to mention the grocery store, clothes, doctor or dentist. We have federal tax, state tax, Social Security tax, school tax, town tax, gas tax, sales tax. Wouldn't it be great if the Government could save 4% instead of ending with a budget deficit of $30 billion?
Connie Burkart Averill Park. N.Y.
There is a simple solution to the dilemma of cutting taxes while persuading Americans to save at the same time. The Federal Government should grant a tax cut only to those taxpayers who agree to deposit all of their tax savings in a special, restricted, three-year certificate of deposit. In the short term, the savings could stimulate business investment without creating additional inflation.
Terry Bedwell Citrus Heights, Calif.
Here we go again; the military becomes the whipping boy. Your article on economics said, "The Government funnels tax money collected from business and workers to people who consume but do not produce: for example, military retirees or welfare recipients." Let's get one thing straight, I worked for the retirement pay I receive. I lived on starvation wages during a naval career, put in thousands of hours of overtime for no extra money and agreed to lay my life on the line for this nation. I earned every cent. You have received this man's production.
Ervin J. Halvorson, U.S.N. (ret.) Sioux Falls, S. Dak.
Book Banning
Your Essay "The Growing Battle of the Books" [Jan. 19] would be amusing were it not so frightening. But how could the book-burning vigilantes have overlooked two of the most titillating materials of my adolescence? I spent many an hour poring over the pictures of the naked women in Africa and the South Sea Islands in National Geographic, and many a Sunday morning at church service engrossed in the erotic poetry and stories of lust, adultery, homosexuality, murder and incest in the Old Testament.
Lynne Davis Hewitt, Texas
If the books in question were filmed in their entirety, which of them could be shown on television? Which of them could my youngsters view at the theater without my consent? Why is it suddenly censorship when the public declines to put them into the hands of their children at school or library?
Ken Buchanan Grass Valley, Calif.
J.F.K. Casket
Author Lifton, who you say thinks someone stole President Kennedy's body and created the bullet hole in the back of his neck [Jan. 19], is apparently unaware that the anesthetist, Dr. Marion Jenkins, at Parkland Hospital in Dallas had found the bullet hole in the back of John F. Kennedy's neck and could see the corresponding exit wound on the front of his throat.
Mr. Lifton also has obviously never tried to remove a brain. Nor has he cut it up to find bullet fragments and then made it go back into the skull so that no one could tell the organ had been removed. You just can't do it.