The Week

Representative Sam Gibbons (D. and a troublemaker, Fla.), maintains that Congress “goofed” last year by amending Section 11 (A) instead of Section 11 (B) of the Internal Revenue Code, as a result of which the federal corporate income tax was repealed. Gibbons goes so far as to call it a “$40-billion typographical error” and says he will introduce a joint resolution to “correct” it. Just hold on there, Gibbons. You dare accuse the representatives of the American people of a $40-billion blunder? The truth is, this legislation is among the most forward-looking and effective reforms ever undertaken by Congress to combat unemployment, inflation, and other economic ills. Everybody knows that corporate taxes are—well—an illusion, that corporations do not pay taxes, and that such taxes (plus commissions) were simply passed on to the consumer, raising the cost of living. A stupid, inefficient, even dishonest system, and it’s about time we were rid of it. The American people and their Congress know what they are doing, Sam. Now shut up and sleep it off.

By some happy quirk of fate beyond our deserts, we seem to have a Treasury Secretary these days who is more interested in the nation’s financial health than in politics. In his latest manifestation of this bias, Secretary Simon knocked New York’s Mayor Abraham Beame speechless for several hours on end. When Congress bailed New York out last year by agreeing to lend the city up to $2.3 billion in seasonal short-term loans, it imposed a number of conditions, prominent among them a prohibition on wage increases for municipal employees until the happy day when New York’s budget should be brought into balance. Naturally, no one in New York’s administration or the New York unions took this proviso seriously. Who ever heard of politicians refusing a wage increase to a big unionized sector of public employees? So the Transit Board and other city administrative bodies have been going confidently ahead along their

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Presidential Election

Representative Sam Gibbons (D. and a troublemaker, Fla.), maintains that Congress “goofed” last year by amending Section 11 (A) instead of Section 11 (B) of the Internal Revenue Code, as a result of which the federal corporate income tax was repealed. Gibbons goes so far as to call it a “$40-billion typographical error” and says he will introduce a joint resolution to “correct” it. Just hold on there, Gibbons. You dare accuse the representatives of the American people of a $40-billion blunder? The truth is, this legislation is among the most forward-looking and effective reforms ever undertaken by Congress to combat unemployment, inflation, and other economic ills. Everybody knows that corporate taxes are—well—an illusion, that corporations do not pay taxes, and that such taxes (plus commissions) were simply passed on to the consumer, raising the cost of living. A stupid, inefficient, even dishonest system, and it’s about time we were rid of it. The American people and their Congress know what they are doing, Sam. Now shut up and sleep it off.

By some happy quirk of fate beyond our deserts, we seem to have a Treasury Secretary these days who is more interested in the nation’s financial health than in politics. In his latest manifestation of this bias, Secretary Simon knocked New York’s Mayor Abraham Beame speechless for several hours on end. When Congress bailed New York out last year by agreeing to lend the city up to $2.3 billion in seasonal short-term loans, it imposed a number of conditions, prominent among them a prohibition on wage increases for municipal employees until the happy day when New York’s budget should be brought into balance. Naturally, no one in New York’s administration or the New York unions took this proviso seriously. Who ever heard of politicians refusing a wage increase to a big unionized sector of public employees? So the Transit Board and other city administrative bodies have been going confidently ahead along their