PLANNING AND DISARMAMENT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In a commendable editorial last week you drew attention to two recent reports on the economic impacts of disarmament and on the need for more planning now. These issues do indeed need more attention, especially by the government, than they have thus far received.

But it is not just the impact of total disarmament that needs studying. We also need to alleviate the impact of less drastic shifts and/or curtailments in the defense budget. Last month I was in Washington arguing that the U.S. seemed to be planning to build too many missiles--more than are needed for a minimum deterrent and so many as to needlessly and dangerously intensify the arms race by threatening the Soviet Union with being on the low end of a "missile gap." To this the liberal and intelligent top aide to one of our most pro-disarmament Senators responded that he personally was all in favor of building "too many" missiles since it would mean more jobs.

Most economists (myself included until recently) have generally tossed off the problems created by the economic impacts of disarmament as being easily handled with modern monetary and fiscal policies. But the political pressures raised by threatened labor and industry alike are already very real, as witness also the difficulty the Defense Department is having in refusing to build more than three B-70's (other factors are also involved here) and in cutting off production of Republic Aviation's F-105 fighters. . . .

Let me suggest four steps we could take to begin dealing with these problems:

1. Expand and strengthen the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Still woefully weak, it needs more and better staff, more money, more creative leadership, and more support from the public and Congress. It has an economics section where, with sufficient public pressure, much of the needed research could be carried out or contracted for.

2. Create an Office for Disarmament Planning in the Bureau of the Budget, rather than a separate Commission as your editorial suggested. If a new outfit is to be created, by all means let it placed where it can share in existing power and have a reasonable chance to be effective. Because of the jobs it should do, the Budget Bureau is probably the ideal place. This Office would work with all the major executive departments in drawing up alternative future programs of needed public expenditures, and with the Treasury on tax programs, based on estimates of possible patterns of defense spending.

3. Establish somewhere within the executive branch of each state that is likely to be seriously affected a division or bureau or office similar to that in the Budget Bureau in Washington. These state planning offices would help gather the information needed by the Washington planners and they would receive information from Washington on likely impacts upon their state and on suggested new directions for industrial development.

4. Bring the national economy back to full employment. This is surely the most overlooked and yet the most important link in any program to alleviate the impacts of shifts in defense spending. Unemployment is still at 5.5% and shows no signs of changing very rapidly. In only two months since 1953 has unemployment dipped below 4%; in only one month since 1957 has it been below 5%. This performance is shameful, and it is no wonder that many people are skeptical when economists tell them there will be no trouble in maintaining full employment no matter what happens to defense spending. Until we return to full employment all the economists and planning offices in the world will be unable to convince our workers and industrialists that disarmament poses no serious threats to them. Michael Brower, Instructor,   School of Industrial Management,   M.I.T.