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Inflation profiteers.

Lee's go into this matter of inflation.

First I want to deal with one of the sleaziest pieces of hypocrisy in a
long time, the pledge of some corporate chief executives to hold down their
salary and bonus increases this year to 5%. Never mind that this 5% often
exceeds the entire wages of most workers, or that the 5% is a publicity
demonstration by a mere handful, silentely ignored by the majority.

According to the comprehensiveBusiness Week survey, in 1976 the
average salary and bonus of top executives increased: 27.2%, and in 1977
another 12.4%. Add 5% in 1978, and it makes a compound three-year in-
crease of exactly 50%! : :

But that isn’t all. The payoffs in stock options have gone up even faster.
And this year the corporations are going wild with a new and richer wrinkle,
the stock appreciation right. :

To make money with a stock option, you have to put up the cash, and

hold the stock for six months. But with the stock appreciation right, you do.

not have to put up a penny. You’re given the increase in the market price of
so many shares of stock, without even buying them. Ina year of rising stock
prices, such as this, it’s a real bonanza.

No group of workers has a chance of matching the three-year increases

of the corporate brass. That’s the only real “‘wage inflation,’ — or, more
sino — part of the very fundamental profit inflation that is taking
place. :
Fortune magazine in its June 5th issue predicts that over the next twelve
months widening profit margins will cause a 3% rise in industrial prices,
bringing the total rise to 10%. And much of the remaining 7% is due to profiteer-
ing, in the last analysis. This admission by Fortune that profit inflation plays the
decisive part in raising inflation to double digit rates can be a most useful
propaganda instrument for the working class.

Besides the forced increase in prices of steel imports by the $50 billion
energy legislation ripoff and the decreed food-price increases among
others, Carter and Federal Reserve Chief William Miller are plotting new
big tax giveaways to corporations and the rich, which will increase the
federal deficit and intensify inflation. Apparently the giveaways-will not be
granted until after this year’s Congressional elections.

Every giveaway in taxes or otherwise to big capital ends up bringing |

about a corresponding tax increase on workers. Part of the plan to ‘‘rescue”’
New York City is to load it with more MAC bonds, to be paid out of sales and
Stock transfer tax revenues. I predict that within a few years, if not sooner,
the.8% New York City sales tax will be raised another notch to protect the
bondholders, including the union pension funds suckered into buying them.

Before launching into his lying tirades against Cuba and the Soviet
Union, President Carter made two statements during a recent press confer-
ence.

First, he said the number one foreign policy task for Congress was to
lift the arms embargo on Turkey and appropriate vast sums to arm both
Turkey and Greece. Second, he said the number one domestic task was to
combat inflation by slashing public works spending. ~

The essence of his first demand, however, was to create more inflation
through more militarism, more foreign bases, more devaluation of the
dollar. And the essence of the second demand was not to counter that
inflation, but to make the people pay for it through lowered governmental
services. -

And how are Carter’s ravings about Africa connected with the urban
crisis? And who is behind both and profits from both?

The top bankers of U.S. imperialism and its Trilateral allies have
taken charge of suppression and plundering of Zaire through the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund, and the interventionist armed forces of world
capitalism.

Yes, the arms race is the central dynamic force behind inflation,
including profit inflation. Along with their increasing arms orders and
profits, the stock prices of Boeing, General Dynamics, and Lockheed have
doubled this year.

The military budget is soaring as never before in peacetime. For fiscal
1979 it goes up $10 billion to $126 billion. Carter projects it to grow in the
following four years to $173 billion. However, the Center for Defense Infor-
mation has exposed secret military buildup plans which will bring it up to
$200 billion in four years if the people do not call a halt.

There is valid economic basis for labor’s demands — for big wage
increases, for a shorter work week without cut in pay, for millions of jobs for
the unemployed, for affirmative action, for a national health program and
other social needs; for control and freezing of monopoly prices, not of
wages.

These demands are popular. They can be won. But this requires simul-
taneous struggle for the Transfer Amdenment, for SALT II and much more
far reaching disarmament measures, for detente, for cooperation, not con-
frontation with the socialist countries, for ending nuclear weapons produc-
tion and stockpiles, for ending foreign bases and interventions.

: By Sara Harris.

I was introduced to the Soviet health

} |system literally minutes after docking

| in Leningrad. While my husband harid-
‘led the baggage and train tickets to

i ‘Moscow, our two-month-old son and I

: jescaped the bustle of the railroad sta-
| tion and went to the “room for mother
j (and child.’’ Exhausted from the trip, I
| \wanted nothing more than to find a quiet

‘corner where I could rest and nurse an

lequally exhausted baby. =
This was the first time I had had oc-

casion to use a ‘“‘room for mother and

| child.”’ I walked in and sat down. A
| 'woman sitting behind a desk directed
} me through one of several doors where I
} ‘saw 20 beds with 20 cribs alongside
} ,each. Only then did I realize that I had
} been sitting in the antiroom of what was
| practically a hotel for mother and child.
| With only four other women in the room
| tending their infants, Andre and I both

sank into a deep sleep until train time.
Later I discovered that there is such an
oasis in every train station and airport.
Even major department stores have a
playroom set up*for the tired shoppe
with his or her child. .
What does this have to do with
health? I’ve long since learned that the
Soviet health system is as involved in
maintaining the welfare of its citizens
as it is in curing them. This I discovered
on my very first visit to the children’s
clinic. The local pediatrician was
shocked when we appeared. How was it
possible there was an infant in her dis-

@
ic
|
trict that she didn’t know about? Ms
she and her nurse are required to
any newborn in the home within df
after mother and child have arti’
from the maternity hospital, and ke
close record of the baby’s developi®”
from thenon. . : A
Since Andre at the age of 12 wee
had no medical problem the dott
merely examined him, prescribed y
amins for both of us, and sent-us 0
“room for the healthy child.’ Thel®
woman gave me detailed advice OF
fant care, including, for example, ™,
kinds of toys to hang over the bab
crib to best correspond to his de |
velopment. She carefully wo

through a whole series of exe
massage his quickly growing 4
which I was supposed to repeat f it
day. I accepted her advice }®
heartedly. Despite her friendly oe
ner, I was not accustomed to being”
how I should handle my. own child.
then went on to tell me to start fa
training Andre at five monthsold! AY.
seeing babies who were out of a
by one year, I have come to fully res "
her advice: U.S. mothers could sa¥®,
pretty penny on ‘‘Pampers’’ if th
would follow suit. i
The two local polyclinics are t
focal point of the health system,
most of a family’s health needs are?
right there. (The two sister polyclitt
for adults and children are planned
every urban neighborhood and ru!
area throughout the Soviet ee
When Andre fell out of his.crib :

|

broke his wrist, we discovered thal

ot

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—July 21, 1978—Page 4