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FIRinG LineSubject: "Mr. Buckley Defends His Four Reforms"

Panelists: Joseph Russin, news director, KOED-TVKate Coleman, free-lance journalistMichael Brown, San Francisco Chronicle

SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

SECA PRESENTS ®

FIRinG Line

HOST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

Subject: MMr. Buckley Defends His Four Reforms"

The FIRING LINE television series is a production of the Southern EducationalCommunications Association, 928 Woodrow St., P.O. Box 5966, Columbia, S.C.,29250 and is transmitted through the facilities of the Public Broadcasting Service.Production of these programs is made possible through a grant from theCorporation for Public Broadcasting. FIRING LINE can be seen and heard eachweek through public television and radio stations throughout the country. Checkyour local newspapers for channel and time in your area.

Panelists: Joseph Russin, news director, KQED-TVKate Coleman, free-lance journalistMichael Brown, San Francisco Chronicle

FIRING LINE is produced and directed bV WARREN STEIBEL

This is a transcript of the FIRING LINE program taped at KQED-TV in San Franciscoon January 14, 1974, and originally telecast on PBS on February 3, 1974.

SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION© Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

@ 1974 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL

COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

MR. BUCKLEY: It is time once again forthe semiannual switch in format that turnsthe interrogator into the interrogatee. I'dhave said turns the inquisitor into theinq'uisitee except that I do not wish to givethe panelists unnecessary encouragement.

Mr. Joseph Russin is a graduate ofHarvard, where he was president of theHarvard Crimson. He served as educationeditor for Newsweek before coming to SanFrancisco, where he pioneered the newslaboratory of the public broadcasting stationand serves now as news director of KQED,from which this program originates.

Ms. Kate Coleman is a graduate of theUniversity of California at Berkeley whereshe was involved in the free speechmovement. She, too, worked for severalyears for Newsweek, while moonlightingwith the underground and demimondainepress. She is a free-lance journalist in SanFrancisco.

Mr. Michael Brown is a graduate of theUniversity of San Francisco. He has workedfor the San Francisco Chronicle for severalyears as researcher and book reviewer and asan aide to the columnist Charles McCabe.

Their task is to make me answer forany crimes or carelessness I may havecommitted in my new book Four Reforms.In that book I propose new approaches inwelfare, in taxation, in education, and incrime. These reforms are primarilyprocedural. Rather than outline them I shallleave it to the panelists to summarize themas they deem necessary with the framing oftheir questions.

I'll begin with Mr. Russin.

MR. RUSSIN: Mr. Buckley, I'm confused inthe section on tax, first, as to whether youthink regressive taxes are good or not.

MR. BUCKLEY: I do not.

MR. RUSSIN: You feel a regressive tax isbad?

MR. BUCKLEY: I do.

MR. RUSSIN: Is a progressive tax effectgood? In other words, should poor peoplepay less percentage of their income than richpeople in taxes of any kind?

MR. BUCKLEY: No, I believe in theuniform tax, proportional tax.

MR. RUSSIN: Straight across the board?

© Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

MR. BUCKLEY: Correct.

MR. RUSSIN: Why?

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it seems to me thatthe commitment of a free society is not topenalize anybody unless he is guilty of somesort of a crime. Since working harder thansomebody else does and therefore makingmore money is not a crime, one ought not,in my judgment, to be penalized for it. Thiswas, as you know, axiomatic in America upuntil the passage of' the SixteenthAmendment, which was done in thiscentury. I believe with Professor Hayek thatthe principal form of democraticirresponsibilitY is done by themaneuverability of the basic tax rate.

MR. RUSSIN: Then you feel no special painfor the incidence of paying that falls ondifferent taxpayers. You make it clear inyour book, $400 to a person earning $2,000is a considerable sum of money. In otherwords, 10 percent to a $2,000 person isconsiderably more painful than 10 percentto a $20,000 person. That doesn't botheryou?

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you pack thequestion rhetorically. All taxation isbothersome. There is a sense in which one isbothered when somebody who earns only$2,000 a year buys a package of cigarettesand pays exactly the same tax that NelsonRockefeller would pay. This doesn't meanthat everybody who approaches a storeshould have tattooed on his arm the extentto which the tax ought to be remitted inorder to find a price that is appropriate tothe social situation.

I think that in this connectionBertrand de Jouvenel's book, Ethics ofRedistribution, is useful because he pointsout that it is a very dangerous business tosay So-and-so suffers less than So-and-sobecause that person's income is greater, aswitness this, that the single heaviest tax onthe very poorest people turns out to bewhat - propertY tax. And yet one alwaysthinks of property tax as that disdainfulaffliction of the wealthy.

MR. RUSSIN: Yes, we'll come to that in aminute.

MR. BUCKLEY: But the answer is a lot ofpoor people don't want to sell their houses.

MR. RUSSIN: Yes, but it's clear thatsomeone earning two or three thousand

MR. BUCKLEY: What faith in corporations?

MS. COLEMAN: How? I don't have to.

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, but I say they wouldhave to.

MR. BUCKLEY: Certainly. Let's assumethat you were the president of Ford -

MS. COLEMAN: They would have to. Thatwould be enforced?

MS. COLEMAN: I guess the part that mostupset me about your tax proposal was theelimination of the corporation tax.

MS. COLEMAN: You said in that that if weeliminated the corporation tax that wouldmean - and your faith in corporations Ifound overwhelmi ng -

MR. BUCKLEY: Why?

situation. The fanciful situation is whenpeople in California vote on the assumptionthat they can actually force money fromWashington to California that didn't comefrom California in the first instance.Forty-three percent of California's welfare is"paid for" by the Federal Government, but43 percent of the money that is di~pensed

for that purpose is, in fact, collected fromCalifornians. &> my point is let us at leasttidy up the house so as to make it possiblefor California to proceed any way it wantsto do. I might like it, you might dislike it,but let them proceed to do this without anyreference to this kind of legerdemain bywhich the vested interests in the welfareworld prevent us really from seeing what'shappening.

MR. BUCKLEY: They would have to.

MS. COLEMAN: I haven't finished. - thatsix percent, I believe was the fi!{ure you used,would be then passed on in lower costs forthe consumer. In other words, if youeliminated the corporation tax, GeneralMotors would cut back that money and passon that savings to the consumer. Well, so farin every other instance where we've seenthat savi ngs - not in every other, excuse me- but it often happens that there will be acutback in something like that and in factprices stay high. What makes you think thatcorporations would pass on that tax savingsto consumers?

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MR. BUCKLEY: Yes.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I say this: There arein America what one might call 31 ­wealthy may be the wrong word - butwealthier states and 19 poor states. The netredistribution goes essentially, under theexisting system, from the wealthier states tothe poorer states. Now, this, in myjudgment, ought to be the unique and alsothe only welfare preoccupation of theFederal Government, to take as they now doa net of four billion dollars - actually lessthan that, $3.8 billion - a mere nine percentof all the money that goes swirling aroundand simply give it as a clean proposition tothose 19 poorer states.

Now, this would leave Californiafacing a realistic rather than a fanciful

MS. COLEMAN: Excuse me, you say itcomes back in terms of welfare -

MS. COLEMAN: - rather than just a flatcash payment?

MR. RUSSIN: Well, that peculiar faith instate government I'd like to come back to,but perhaps Kate wants to get into it.

MS. COLEMAN: I appreciated in your book,Mr. Buckley, still on the taxes, that youbrought up the different tax rates formarried people or single people and thatsingle people felt discriminated against. Thiswas an ever-going spiral and by saying a flat15 percent you were hoping to avoid thatwhole ballgame. But you said that then poorpeople, because they did pay sales taxes, etcetera, would have that money remitted tothem, that it would come back.

Again, you're saying that that will savetime, et cetera. I don't understand how thatwould come back to them and on what thatwould be calculated. It seems that thedifficu Ities of the progressive or regressivetax would still occur in remitting thatmoney back to poor people on the bottom.Do you care to explain how that wouldwork?

MR. BUCKLEY: The way it would workinsofar as my book makes recommendationsis that - taki ng, for instance, the State ofCalifornia - the State of California could dowhat it wanted to about its welfare program.I even say the state -

wanted to accomplish, an appropriate taxschedule.

MR. RUSSIN: Yes, which you leave out.

MR. BUCKLEY: But proceeding here, I amassuming that a great many adjustmentswould be made in the state tax structure ifthe Federal Government followed these, Ithink, terribly sensible prescriptions andrecommendations, because they would thenadjust to the new reality and engage, withspecial local reference to that which they

© Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

MR. BUCKLEY: As a matter of fact, thathappens not to be true. The most regressivetax is social security, which is a Federal tax.

MR. RUSSIN: That's another subject. Onthe question of taxes, the most regressivetaxes that you present in the book are stateand city taxes. The most progressive taxes,the ones that tend to leaven that effect, arethe Federal income taxes and that youpropose to change.

MR. BUCKLEY: Precisely my figures don'tshow anything of the sort. My figures showthat 91 percent of the whole preoccupationof the Federal Government with welfare iscompletely circuitous, i.e., they take fromMs. Coleman and they give back to Ms.Coleman. And for this we go through a $30billion annual show only -

MR. RUSSIN: Why should we write socialpolicy which places the greatest burden forequity on that level of government whichyour own provenly quoted figures show ismost inequitable?

MR. BUCKLEY: Why do I have anyconfidence at all in the states? The reasonwe have a Federal system rather than a singlestate is because we recognize that there aredifferent cu Itural and even ethical emphasesthat different states would want to humor.

For instance, the problem in Floridaof the aged is much greater than the problemof the aged in, say, Wisconsin. Now whyshould we, under the circumstances, writesocial policy of a comprehensive characterthat bi nds the two equally as regards theaccents of welfare?

tax which is proposed by the FederalGovernment. That you propose to level andthen you say, "Let the states handle theproblem of regression from there on." Whydo you have any confidence in the states todo that when, up to the present time, themajor taxes that are regressive are statetaxes?

2

MR. BUCKLEY: Sure, but I recognize nosuch situation as having a historicalantecedent that is recognizable.

MR. RUSSIN: Well, clearly there areadvantages to being rich. Aren't there alsodisadvantages to a society when theadvantages of being rich are so great and soenormous, so long·term, so dislocating interms of economic and political power in thecountry, that it creates permanent lack ofopportunity for those on the bottom?

MR. BUCKLEY: No, in Kuwait I think thatprobably would be true. It certainly isn'ttrue in America. There is no sense in whichNelson Rockefeller, the whole sum of whoseresources would be consumed, at the rate atwhich government uses money, in less thanhalf a day, is an inhibition. On the contrary,there are a hell of a lot of things that NelsonRockefeller does, for all that I disagree withhim, that are useful that he couldn't doexcept that he has surplus.

If you've got people who don't haveenough money, my own feeling is thatsociety ought to look after them, but societyought not to look after them by all of asudden deciding that they are embarked in aredistributionist ethic the purpose of whichis not really to look after them but to hurtthe man who has more. And this is thewhole nature of progressive tax.

MR. BUCKLEY: If you're saying there areadvantages to being rich I agree, but you'regoing to say something more interesting thanthat, I assume.

MR. RUSSIN: All right, let's look at theredistributionist point you make. What youpropose in the book is, among other things,a 15 percent flat income tax.

dollars is in considerably more economicpain than Nelson Rockefeller, or you.

MR. BUCKLEY: That's right.

MR. RUSSIN: No deductions, noexemptions, 15 percent whatever theincome. And then you also show rathernicely in the book that the most regressivetaxes are not the income I tax; they'reproperty tax, they're other taxes. Most ofthem are sales taxes, most of which areimposed by states and cities. The only reallyprogressive thing in the system is the income

MR. RUSSIN: You don't think thatsituation exists in the United States.

MS. COLEMAN: And that would increasespending, supposedly.

MR. BUCKLEY: - and I was the presidentof General Motors and you wanted toincrease the number of sales. All of a suddenyour overhead is reduced by 15 percent;then obviously you would say, "Well, here'sa chance to sell a Chevrolet car for less."Your failure to do so allows the consumer torefuse to pay your price and, of course, thebest competitor of Ford is not GeneralMotors but the secondhand market.

MS. COLEMAN: Why shouldn't acorporation, which certainly makes a lot ofmoney as an entity - I know you talk inyour book about the fact that they don'tmake as much as private income and youtalk about taxing instead the shareholders,but that seems to be infinitely morecomplicated than getting it at the source.

MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, nothing is complicatedunder my system. You just take 15 percentperiod. That's the most uncomplicated thingin the history of taxation.

MS. COLEMAN: So you hit eachshareholder -

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. What I say is thatpeople who feel that a corporation tax is atax borne on other shoulders than their ownare naive. It is a tax borne substantially ontheir shoulders in a competitive society,obviously not in a monopoly society. ButI'm assuming a competitive situation andyou can pack on as many more monopolylaws as please you. They would please mealso.

Now, this being the case, you are, inmy judgment, much, much better off simplytaxing realistically at a uniform rate andvaulting the fiction that by taxing the ChaseManhattan Bank or even the local Safewaystore you are really mysteriously producingmoney that wouldn't otherwise beforthcoming, to say nothing of the ancillarybenefits that would come from a wholeseries of corporate policies that were notbased on how to lower their income tax.This would be then their dollars they weretrading in, not 50 percent governmentdollars, which greatly affects their policiesnow.

MS. COLEMAN: What you're talking aboutthen raises the possibility of a certain kindof price control in the corporations.

MR. BUCKLEY: How?

MS. COLEMAN: Well, because you're sayingthat if they have their taxes deducted thenthey could not pass on that 'cost toconsumers; it would in fact be a rollback.That's what you suggest in the book.

MR. BUCKLEY: If the cost ofmanufacturing a car is, let's say, $2,000 andlet's say you make 10 percent profit and allof a sudden the cost of manufacturing a carreduces to $1700, there is going to be if notpro tanto at least in the direction of areduction of price. This is the whole way the'free market works.

MS. COLEMAN: And if the screws thatthey've bought, the nuts and bolts, arecheaper, too, that will be passed on - itseems that would take a lot of policing, too.Why not just take 15 percent ofcorporations as wei'll

MR. BUCKLEY: You've got to rememberthat 78 percent of the cost of manufacturinga car or anything else is a labor cost and thatis not reduced in this sense. All you'replaying with is that margin of overhead thatgoes to the government in the form oftaxation, and I'm simply saying eliminate itcompletely and you will find that everybodyis better off. If there is a flash bonanza forthe shareholder, I say so what? Does itmatter if a shareholder gets 15 percentricher, which is how this would work outeconomically, if at the same time everybodyis able to buy everything at 15 percent less?

MS. COLEMAN: I fail to see how thatwould follow through, but maybe M ikecan -

MR. BROWN: I wanted to return to Mr.Russin's line of questioning about theburden of state taxes on the poor. I knowyou don't want to deal with substantivereforms - you say you don't in your book.If I asked you, do you have state reforms inmind, would you be telling me what thesesubstantive reforms are?

MR. BUCKLEY: I just do not focus onthem. I think that states are capable of doinga lot of foolish things and have done a lot offoolish things but I do believe that theyought to be permitted to do so providedthere is an alternative for an Americancitizen. There is no alternative if the FederalGovernment takes over because you are

automatically victimized by a set of tax lawsthat there is simply no way of avoiding. Butif California b'ecame, let's say, stupid andfoolish in its tax policies, at least marginallypeople could leave California and exertpressure on it from other states.

MR. BROWN: But you hope for the prudentexperimentation that you mention in thebook -

MR. BUCKLEY: Sure, that's right.

MR. BROWN: - and don't particularly wantto direct those states in any particulardirection yourself.

MR. BUCKLEY: I'd rather not, but I'm anamiable guy and I'll answer any questionyou want to ask.

MR. BROWN: Let it lie. On the same subjectof taxes, Milton Friedman stated this in avery political sense; he said the right wingwould be more than willing to give up theloopholes in return for lower rates and theleh wing would probably be more thanwilling to give up the high rates in return forclosing the loopholes. Do you agree withthat and, if you don't agree with that, is thatperhaps part of the reason why you'vesuggested Point 5 of your reform, thatCongress should reimburse taxpayers belowthe poverty line? Are you taking it out ofthe political arena that Friedman is talkingabout, the right wing and the left wing?

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, I am in this sense:Assuming there is a level of democraticsatisfaction with the services currently beingperformed by government noticegovernment, not state government, FederalGovernment - for society in general, I have,I think, demonstrated that at least as muchcould be accomplished by a uniform tax rateof 15 percent and that on top of that youcould also, with the revenue that came inunder these reforms, reimburse victims ofregressive taxation in all of the poorer statesand still not run a deficit over and againstthe deficit currently run in right up to now.But I also think that the effect of this wouldbe so stimu lating that the probability is thatthere would be a higher general level ofprosperity and a much more efficientlyorganized economic mechanism because 90percent of one's creative energy wouldn't bespent, as it is now, on how to reducetaxation. As one professor said, "For 15percent tax I wouldn't even bother to

cheat."

MR. RUSSIN: But there is a problem. I'vealways been attracted to the idea of a flattax and doing away, as you propose, withdeductions and exemptions because what'shappened is we use the tax system in twoways, as you know. One is for revenue andthe other is to encourage certain kinds ofeconomic activity by preferential taxtreatment.

MR. BUCKLEY: Or social, activity.

MR. RUSSIN: Social or economic, eitherway. If you remove the incentive use of thetax system to encourage activity, you have avast number of enterprises or activitieswhich then lack their money support.

MR. BUCKLEY: Why?

MR. RUSSIN: For instance, if you takeaway the deduction for charitable donations,don't you endanger giving to colleges? If youtake away the deductions, the preferentialtax treatment for ship-building, those kindsof things, things that are not just subsidy butsubsidy and tax, like oil, don't you endangerthose industries? If you take away thededuction for interest payments, don't youchange the entire equity structure of realproperty? Now, as a conservative, how doyou propose to handle such vast and suddenshifts in the value of money and the value ofcertai n enterprises?

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, in the first place, itcould be done, of course, at a rate thatpermits an adjustment. It could be done,say, over three or four years. But taking thefirst and in a sense symbolic case, HarvardUniversity certainly has benefited in the pastfrom the fact that you can give $1,000 toHarvard University if you're rich and $500of it is money that would otherwise havegone to the Federal Government. That initself is something that is subject to the kindof criticism that is widespread today aboutcertai n types of loopholes but is, I thi nk,protected as a result of the fact that we havean effective education lobby.

Now, the rich man would no longersee the attraction of giving money toHarvard in those terms under my reform,but he would have a lot more money to give,because if he were paying not at the, say, 70percent rate but at the 15 percent rate, hewould have gained on the entire transaction45 units. But he only is saved 30 units under

4 © Board of Trustees of the L' land Stanford Jr. University. 5

MR. BUCKLEY: We both are.

MR. RUSSIN: - because when you getthrough with the inevitable pressure forsubsidies, won't it really raise more like 20or 25 percent and then aren't you really in amess?

MR. BUCKLEY: I don't think so.

because the most efficient way to do it isjust to get some money from the FederalGovernment through the lobbies and we'llhave a lot of - Take the real estate lobby,which can certainly marshal enormousweight. They will probably just ask fordirect subsidy and then the budget will befurther out of balance again because you'vealready spent the money.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, there is no reason tosay that people cannot proceeddemocratically to ask for subsidies. Youmight approve of them, I might approve ofthem. But I'm very much opposed togranting those subsidies by tinkering withtax laws. If I want you to stay married toher, I do not decide to effect this, I beingthe government, by tinkering with your taxreturns in such a way as to make iteconomically disadvantageous for you toseparate.

MS. COLEMAN: I know now why I'm aradical.

MR. RUSSIN: (laughing) No amount ofgovernment encouragement has entered intothat relationship.

But the question is then, finally, areyou being unrealistic though on promisingpeople a 15 percent tax -

MR. BUCKLEY: No, if people say theywant to go to Mars tomorrow or whatever,they can say it. But if you have a maximumtax of 15 percent, then you have an impl icitrestraint on the government to decide howbest to allocate the income from that ,15percent. And if the American people decidethat they want all of it to go to milkproducers, which I think unlikely, then all ofit will go to milk producers. But meanwhileat least you are shielded from this ravenousappetite to redistribute by the guaranteethat your tax rate won't go up.

MS. COLEMAN: I mean, I don't think theyhave this problem of which college they'regoing to donate to in China, or that -

7

MR. RUSSIN: Well, more people presumablywill have a lot of pressure for price supportsunder cattle, the way we had under milk andeverything else. That's goi ng to be probably

MR. RUSSIN: Oh, I'm not quarreling withthat. The question was really friendly. It waswhat are you going to do about all thesethings that have been subsidized through thetax system?

MR. BUCKLEY: I'd let the market adjust.The market adjusts through demand andsupply to this. If, for instance, there is aterrific shortage of cattle, what will happen?Well, the price of hamburger is going to goup - that's what happened last summer ­and more people will invest their money intocattle.

MR. BUCKLEY: My own feeling is that inalmost every case efforts to make social andeconomic policy by government tax policyhave caused distortions. And I give severalexamp les of it - on the business of thehusband and the wife and the alimonypayment and whatever. I do not know ofany economist, and certainly not, forinstance, the economists who advised GeorgeMcGovern, whose ideological sympathies arenot in question, who doesn't agree that tensof billions of dollars of economic distortionare the result of trying to regulate economicpolicy through -

30 percent limitation on giving, but if thewhole of your thesis is that rich peoplewould not like to have a tax rate reductionto 15 percent, I say, let's force them to haveit.

MR. RUSSIN: No, that is not my argument.My question is - and then I'll let otherspursue - what do you propose to do, andwe've hung up on charitable donations, withthose activities wh ich now take placebecause of tax encouragement? There are anumber of business activities that havenothing to do with charitableencouragement where people makeinvestments in cattle or in real estate or inoil or other things because the tax laws makethat an advantageous investment.Presumably if the tax laws didn't make it anadvantageous investment then the structureof those industries would change. Thechances are, going from our past history,that what would really happen is therewould be a lot of pressure then for directsubsidy of a level which would throw yourbudget further out of balance.

MR. BUCKLEY: You're talking about the

© Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it can be explainedwithout your experiencing it presumably.

MR. RUSSIN: I mean, if you lower yourrate enough, your total taxation, then youcan escape more in taxes than you give inphilanthropy, at certain levels.

MR. RUSSIN: Well, that's, as you said, thebreaks.

MR. BUCKLEY: Suppose I made a dumbinvestment.

MR. BUCKLEY: Okay, so then I might beworse off, but don't compare that situationwith the situation in which the money isyours.

MR. RUSSIN: But people are still going totake risks. Whether there's a 15 percent taxor a 50 percent tax, they're going to takerisks with their money to see if they can getmore of it. &:l that's a constant in eithersystem. The question is that they will nothave encouragement now to certainactivities, which I would agree with you maynot be properly encouraged through the taxsystem but how will they be encouragedwithout it?

MR. RUSSIN: Well, if you made a wiseinvestment, obviously when you payoffyour loan you've made an enormous capitalgain.

MR. BUCKLEY: I find it extremely hard tounderstand your motiviation becausehowever rich a person you are under theexisting tax law, if you decide to give $1,000to Harvard UniversitY it's still going to costyou much more than 15 percent. It's goingto cost you, let's say, 50 percent, to edge uptoward that 45 percent; or, if you like, let'saccept your premise that the effective taxrate on the very rich person is about 45percent, which is documentable. Then it'sstill costing you $55 for every $100 that yougive. Now, if you are thus motivatedphilanthropically to lose $55 that wouldotherwise be yours, presumably -

MR. RUSSIN: Not necessarily. If you couldeffectively lower your rates down, you canend up making money on donations. At leastI'm told that by people who have theoption. I've never had a chance to play withit.

6

MR. RUSSIN: So he would pay quite a bitof tax.

MR. BUCKLEY: Now, now, now, now.

MR. RUSSIN: And the amount of heatthat's been generated against even cosmeticthings, like a five percent minimum tax,indicates that there are a number of peoplewho think that a five percent tax would besomething of a burden.

MR. BUCKL EY: No, this is a remarkable actof economic compression. For you to saythat somebody' pays no tax does not meanthat 100 percent of his income was availableto him to spend. It means that 100 percentof his income, or 90 percent or whatever,went into a series of ventures, for instance,borrowing and paying interest, whichresulted in deductions.

MR. RUSSIN: Deductions which you wouldrule out.

MR. BUCKLEY: Absolutely.

MR. RUSSIN: Well, that's a hypothesiswhich assumes something which is difficultto assume, that the people of great wealth infact pay anything near the rates that they'resupposed to be assessed. And we have tworather prominent people who come to mind,of course, who received high income whodidn't pay anything at all, even a nominalrate - the President of the United States andthe governor. of the State of California. Iassume there are other people in thatsituation, so that for them a 15 percent taxwould actually be quite a big tax increase.

MR. BUCKLEY: The whole arrangement,presumably, of his portfolio would change.In fact, I think you probably know thatsomething like one-sixth of one percent ofthe very rich people in the United States in1970, when these last figures were, paid lessthan the effective rate of 45 percenttaxation. Now, occasionally odd thingshappen and you can beat it, but you don'tnecessarily beat it to your personaladvantage. If I go and borrow $10 millionand I find myself paying a million dollars ininterest, in what sense am I necessarilybetter off than if some of that money wereto go to the government?

the existing system in being encouraged togive money to Harvard.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, the answer is, ofcourse, there haven't been any colleges inChina for the last four or five years, so thequestion is moot.

MS. COLEMAN: In the last year they'veopened up again.

MR. BUCKLEY: Slowly.

MS. COLEMAN: The other thing that Ijust a little thing to throw out about thelargesse of the rich when not given the taxbreak, I read a book on Aristotle Onassisthat said he gave no charity.

MR. BUCKLEY: So what?

MS. COLEMAN: Well, I'm just pointing outthat with the 15 percent - I mean, then youhave that - again, it's getting back to Joe'sargument about what happens to all the,charitable institutions. I mean, again, inChina they don't have to give to charity, it'sthere.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, let me give you somereassuring figures. Four times as much wasspent in private charity in the Thirties by theAmerican people than by the government,and that was when the tax rate was very low.

MS. COLEMAN: Yes.

MR. BUCKLEY: So if you deny thephilanthropic impulses of the Americanpeople, you are being anti-historical.

MS. COLEMAN: I'd deny them.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, how do you accountfor $150 billion?

MS. COLEMAN: Tax breaks.

MR. BUCKLEY: I don't know where youwent to school, but - There were only threemillion people who paid taxes in theThirties, three million people who paidincome taxes in the Thirties, and yetpractically every private institution, everychurch, every hospital was built. It was builtby Americans. You all of a sudden thinkthat charity was invented by FDR orsomething.

MS. COLEMAN: No, I just think that duringthe Thirties their guilt was a little bit larger.

MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, please. Presumably

they felt guilty or they would havereordered the economy so as not to haveimpoverished themselves, which is the classicway to do it.

MS. COLEMAN: Not guilty enough.

MR. RUSSIN: The Thirties is a ratheratypical decade to use for economic figures.

MR. BUCKLEY: That's why I chose it. Ifyou've got philanthropy in the Thirties, itseems to me things are especially reassuring.

MR. RUSSIN: Well, you also had enormouschasms of those who had and those whodidn't and very few in-between.

MR. BUCKLEY: I don't see the point ofthis.

MR. RUSSIN: Yes, but those who had had amore special -

MR. BUCKLEY: All of a sudden we drug inAristotle Onassis for reasons that aren't clearto me and you used him as a synecdoche forthe purpose of indicting the whole ofAmerican society.

MR. RUSSIN: Well, I don't-

MR. BUCKLEY: All of a sudden this iswoven into taxes and I walked back into asituation where there weren't any taxes tospeak of.

MR. RUSSIN: No, it may be more tvpical tolook at a more prosperous period in thecountry, the late Nineties or the early partof the century, when the only reasonfoundation giving or big organizedphilanthropy out of the enormous fortunesoccurred was either through tremendous fearof congressional action, as in the case of theRockefellers, or through tax laws whichmade, say, the Ford Foundation possible.

MR. BUCKLEY: Absolutely untrue.

MR. RUSSIN: Carnegie being the exception.

MR. BUCKLEY: Carnegie was the greatestphilanthropist -

MR. RUSSIN: Being the exception.

MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, now, come on. In thefirst place, by current standards, 50 percentof the American people were poor in 1900

and, under the circumstances, there wasn'tthe kind of residue on which philanthropydepends. But if- you feel that the Americanpeople are not philanthropic and if you alsobelieve in democracy, how are you going tojustify philanthropy via the democraticmethod? If the people vote to give andthey're voting autotaxation - 91 percent ofall of the income that's raised is raised frompeople in below $10,000 bracket. So ifyou're going to engage in governmentphilanthropy, you are primarily using themoney bf people who earn $10,000 or lessper year.

MS. COLEMAN: Right, but I don't thinkthat the people who are taxed like that arepaying their taxes out of philanthropicmotives.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, then it's not ademocracy or else it's one that you have soconfused that they don't understand whatthey're doing.

MS. COLEMAN: (laughing) No kidding.

MR. BUCKLEY: When people rush to thepolls in California and vote for more schoollunches or whatever, you and I know thatthey really think they're voting for otherpeople to spend it. But you and I both knowthat they're not, that they're simply votingto crank up the machinery that takes moremoney from them in the first instance. Andthese charts and things in my bookabsolutely demonstrate it.

MR. RUSSIN: Right, and your chartsdemonstrate that if you put in a straight 15percent tax what's really going to happen isthat the middle class, which you properlyshow arranges things most advantageously toits advantage, will probably pay a little bitmore in tax and they'll probably have to endup with more government philanthropy thatthey may not want.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, this will be simply amatter of choice. You're very much given topredicting behavior priorities and I say goahead and predict anything you want. Itdoesn't stand in the way of my thesis. AllI'm saying is -

MR. RUSSIN: Well, I'm as gloomy about thenature of government imperatives as you are.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that's healthy.

MR. BROWN: Perhaps we could edge intothe welfare section by -

MR. BUCKLEY: You mean out of thewelfare section, or into it?

MR. BROWN: No, into the welfare sectionfrom the taxation by stating one of yourproposed reforms for taxation, which is thatCongress should assist people in the poorerstates who live below the poverty level.

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes.

MR. BROWN: Daniel Moynihan doesn't likeyour using per capita income as the standardfor leveling above the median and below themedian level of a poor state. Why doesn't helike - Well, perhaps you can't answer that.Why do you place so much emphasis on percapita income as the standard?

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I think it's true thatyou can say, "Look, the guy who goes outto buy lunch in New York CitY is going topay a hell of a lot more for lunch than theguy who goes out to buy lunch inMississippi." That's true. But to wal k thatargument into saying that there is nodifference in the standard of living in NewYork, where the average guy makes $5,000,the average person - this is men, women,children - and in Mississippi, where theaverage person makes $2,788, is to surrenderto a statistical relativism that's unrealistic.The answer is people in New York do livebetter than people in Mississippi and, underthe circumstances, you can say, I thinkconvincingly, the resources of a New Yorkerare greater for the purpose of looking afterpeople who need help than in Mississippi.

MR. BROWN: You say that the temporarywelfare recipient will be invested with a sortof relative affluence by, I think you call it,the wealth-oriented dynamic of theAmerican society. Is it perhaps possible thatthe economic fluctuations of, say, the last10 years are part of the welfare problem andthat the wealth-oriented dynamic ofAmerican society is not healthy andfunctioning presently?

MR. BUCKLEY: The figures as of thismorning are that it didn't function very welllast year, that the American people sufferedone percent net loss in their purchasingpower over the year before, certainly notjustifying the kind of economists' optimismthat we were all treated to 12 months ago.

8 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University,9

What caused it is something that Isuppose we might quarrel about. I think itwas at least substantially caused by deficitspending, by an absolutely uncontained rateof inflation substantially fueled by Americanindulgence in these superstitions. Anythingyou want the Federal Government ought tobe able to give you and all of a sudden,however, they should not depreciate thevalue of your dollar. This is unrealistic andwhen you spend $30 billion or $40 billionmore than you in fact take in, you're goingto have this kind of inflation and this kindof result.

My feeling is that nothing focusespeople's attention so much on basiceconomic reality as a sense of relationshipbetween that which they give themselves andthat which they spend, and that this canonly as a psychological matter be recoveredin a much, much smaller arena than the onewe're used to dealing with.

MR. RUSSIN: I'd like to move off taxes fora moment and go to the education section.You make a-

MS. COLEMAN: I want to stay on welfarefor a minute.

MR. RUSSIN: You want to stay on welfare?

MS. COLEMAN: Yes, because I wanted toask Mr. Buckley a few things about that,about some of your premises. You said thatwelfare payments have increased somethinglike 10 percent, or possibly more, and yousaid that the reason for that is because of theincreased availability of it as well. You'vetalked about the real wealth of the average -

MR. BUCKLEY: 140 percent, not 10percent.

MS. COLEMAN: 140 percent. You've talkedabout the average income, for example, ofblack people increasing tremendously andthat more and more are becoming membersof the middle class. Well, as a premise, ofcourse, this overlooks the fact that in factthe people at the bottom of the pickle barrel- and in this let's talk about blacks for aminute - have remained there and the gaphas indeed increased between rich and poor.

MR. BUCKLEY: Not true, sorry. I mean I'mglad it's not true.

MS. COLEMAN: The figures that I've readhave said that - while I would agree with

you that more and more black people areentering into the middle class - there arealso increasing numbers of poor who remainpoor and in fact are poorer. Now, you talk alot about relative poverty and, you know, Ifind that very troubling because there's stillthat sizable bulk of people at the bottomwho are remaining poor. And I don't know,I feel that that premise is anoversimplification, just to say that it'srelative.

MR. BUCKLEY: I've got good news for you,and I say this not sarcastically. In constantdollars, 20 percent of the American peoplewere poor in 1960 and in 1970 that hadreduced to 11 percent. They don't have thefigures for '72, but the guess is that that'snine percent. Now, if you put this on agraph, you get a pretty reassuring secularline of the diminution of poverty. I tend toagree with you that that line will notcontinue, that rather it will prove to be sortof asymptotic and that here you will havepeople who will never be able to rise withthe American mobile toward wealth. Thosepeople are primarily people who areuntouched by the ethic of self-help,untouched by the ethic of a desire to lookafter themselves, people with, in a sense, anethical disorder by our terms.

MS. COLEMAN: And you overlook also thejob situation.

MR. BUCKLEY: Those people will have tobe helped.

MS. COLEMAN: You overlook also thesituation of unemployment.

MR. BUCKLEY: I'm not overlookinganyth ing yet. I just gave you a spl at set ofstatistics which completely confuted yourvery gloomy premises. Now if you say,"Gosh, that's good news, now tell me aboutunemployment" -

MS. COLEMAN: You didn't give thestatistics; you said that you cannot reachthem with the self-help ethic.

MR. BUCKLEY: I say some people youcan't. The people that Roger Starr calls thedisorganized poor - if you say, "Look, I'llgive you $100 an hour to mow the lawn,"they won't mow the lawn. Now, if you say,"What are you going to do about theproblem of unemployment?" that's a wholeother thing which I don't touch on in this

book.

MS. COLEMAN: I'm just saying that thatnotion, I mean, that's not a statistic thatsome people, no matter how much you gavethem, would fritter it away or they'd bepoor tomorrow. That I don't go along withat all because -

MR. BUCKLEY: There are not that manybut there are some.

MS. COLEMAN: Well, then, are you talkingabout the increase in welfare rolls -

MR. BUCKLEY: All I'm saying is that at therate at which we're reducing hardship -

MS. COLEMAN: Are they being squeezedby, you know, unemployment or is it thatthey are unreachable by the self-help ethic?That is, they want to be poor, which is anold argument against people on welfare.

MR. BUCKLEY: I really don't want to talk. about that, not because I can't but because I

don't want to. I don't want to because itgets away from the procedural burden ofthis book.

MS. COLEMAN: Well, there arepresumptions behind your procedures.

MR. BUCKLEY: If between 1970 and 1980we make the same progress we madebetween 1960 and 1970, and there is noreason to think we shouldn't, we would bedown to a hardship rate of one or twopercent. Now, you may introduce Zeno'sparadox and say that you can't get there bygoing in halves, but still, if you look at thegraph, it has gone from 50 percent poor toseven percent poor in our system. This issomething that should be encouraged.

MR. RUSSIN: You just gave yourself twopercent.

MR. BUCKLEY: No, I said -

MR. RUSSIN: In 1970 it was 11 percent,then you speculated nine percent, and sincewe started talking it has dropped to seven.

MR. BUCKLEY: That's right. Since westarted talking we went from 1972 to 1974.

MR. RUSSIN: And so it's gone to seven.That's marvelous. In the middle of an energycrisis - magnificent.

(laughter)

MR. BUCKLEY: I'm projecting, I'mpro jecti ng.

MS. COLEMAN: Mr. Buckley, you alludedhere in California to Reagan's way ofhandling welfare chiselers which is, in part,to reduce the welfare rolls by tracking downerrant fathers, whether they be ofillegitimate or legitimate children -

MR. BUCKLEY: Errant, yes.

MS. COLEMAN: Errant.

MR. BUCKLEY: Not arrant.

MS. COLEMAN: Knights-errant. Because ofthat you said there are some 270,000 fewerwelfare cases on the rolls. It's true that casesin California have gone down. I wonderabout the money spent to track down thesefathers. I'm wondering if you endorseReagan's means of lowering the welfare rate,and just because the welfare rate is lowered,.I'm not convinced that that means you'veeliminated the problem of poverty. You mayhave increased prostitution, you may haveincreased crime, break-ins. T hat, too,could -

MR. BUCKLEY: Most thieves don't reporttheir income from theft, so I think that youcan assume that the statistics wouldn't showthem.

MS. COLEMAN: No, I'm saying that whenyou knock people off welfare - I'm notconvinced in California, by any means, givenjust what Reagan has cut back on. He'sclosed mental institutions. That doesn'tmean that people who are mentallydisturbed are any less mentally disturbed; itjust means that more of them are on thestreets. And I've seen that in a side issue ofthe increasi ng incidence of viol ence on thestreets by people who have just gotten outof mental institutions.

MR. BUCKLEY: That's piffle as far as - notthat it's not important, but it's piffle interms of my book.

MS. COLEMAN: I love piffle.

MR. BUCKLEY: I spent exactly oneparagraph in my book on the Reaganproposal as the ki nd of thi ng -

10 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 11

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes.

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes.

MR. RUSSIN: What do you mean by that?

MR. RUSSIN: Well, it's related. Yourproposal is fairly simple in the book.

MR. BUCKLEY: Not in my opinion, no.

MR. BUCKLEY: That's correct.

MR. RUSSIN: So if we're going to talkabout a constitutional amendment, which isa fairly major reform, shouldn't we havesome notion in mind how that might help ustoward reading and writing, or are we justtalking about a little legal nicety on the sideto get rid of the bussing pressure?

MR. RUSSIN: And we could probably agreethat that isn't being done very well at thepresent time.

MR. BUCKLEY: The absorption, as youknow, in the American communitY with thewhole problem of bussing and all that itsuggests is somethi ng that has got to beconsuming energy that might be spent moreprofitably. But let me back up and say thatto say that reading and writing is somethingthat you and I both agree on as first prioritymay be misunderstood. It's not really fi rstpriority. In my opinion, first priority is thesovereignty of the parents over theirchil'dren's education, and' if they choose tosend them to a school in which there's moreemphasis put on football than on readingand writing, I'm not here to say that thatought to be a crime or illegal. I happen tothink that it's dumb to go to school and notlearn how to read and write -

MR. RUSSIN: I say to get rid of the bussingpressure. But how does that get us anybetter education?

MR. BUCKLEY: Private schools.

MR. BUCKLEY: You're not talking about alegal nicetY if you get the State ofWisconsin voting for George Wallace forpresident.

MR. RUSSIN: Americans are increasinglyless Iiterate.

MR. RUSSIN: Of which the vast majorityare Catholic, on the elementary school level.

MR. RUSSIN: But if we are talking abouteducation as a major problem area and we'regoing to make a major reform statement, themajor reform statement appears to have two

·characteristics. One, to help bailoutCatholic schools, which I'd suspectunexceptional, and the second is -

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I'm interested to hearyou say that and yet the figures as of a weekago show that the people were achievinghigher test scores in black and white schools10 years ago than now.what do you do withthat? Are you going to put that in your pipeand smoke it?

(laughter)

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, is that your answer­that because more people are in schoolsnecessarily the accomplishment leveldiminishes?

MR. RUSSIN: But we can agree that a firstprinciple of education is to teach peoplehow to read and write?

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes.

MR. RUSSI N: We also have a situationwhere more people are in schools.

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes.

MR. RUSSIN: Which was not done verywell, particularly for minority peoples, for along time and still isn't being done well.What do you propose should happen aboutthat?

polls of black voters show that whereasintegrated education was 10 years ago firstor second in' their list of desires, it's nowdown around 13th. Under thecircumstances, I would guess thai the kindof judicial energy that has gone intodiscriminating in the composition of schoolson the basis of color would end and that assuch people would return primarily to thebusiness of education.

MR. RUSSIN: It's possible.

MS. COLEMAN: Emphasis.

MR. RUSSIN: Wouldn't we agree to that?

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, once again I think allof us have terribly interesting things to sayabout this, but I'm not in a mood toorganize California's schools. I'm very muchin the mood to say that the Brown v. Boardof Education makes sense, that youshouldn't discriminate against anybody onaccount of color, but that we arediscriminating against people on account ofcolor.

-,

don't see whyMR. BUCKLEY:California's -

MR. RUSSIN: What policies do you seecoming from such a change, particularlY inrelationship to integration?

MR. BUCKLEY: I choose to put it that wayrather than your way because there is adifference in inflection.

MR. BUCKLEY: I would think that it wouldaccelerate what is already happening. What isal ready happening is that the notion thatintegration would substantially catapult theblack people of America into educationaladvantages that derived exclusively fromthat association is shattered, so much so that

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, to discriminate on thebasis of color is the way I put it and I chooseto guard the inflection.

MR. RUSSIN: Okay. You state the obviousat the beginning, that a procedural reform isvery often the predecessor of an importantpolicy reform because they make differentpolicies possible.

MR. RUSSIN: One part of it essentially ismake it possible to give money to Catholicand other private schools and the other partof it is essentially to do away with forcedintegration. Is that a fair statement?

MR. BUCKLEY: Now, wait a minute.You're talking about standards. If you'resaying should the standards for housing inCalifornia be set in Washington or inSacramento, I say in Sacramento. That's allI'm saying. That's very easy. So I don't thinkyou have to belabor that. I've already said itand I don't know how to say it again moreclearly.

MR. BROWN: I've got a couple of educationquestions, but I defer to the ex-educationeditor.

MS. COLEMAN: You think the foodstamps, for example -

MS. COLEMAN: You mention the case thatFlorida has more elderly people, therefore -

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes.

MR. BUCKLEY: That's right.

MS. COLEMAN: - one would assume theirwelfare would be more concerned with theaged.

MS. COLEMAN: You are saying that interms of - Your proposal, in fact, says thatyou believe that the states should have theright to experiment and to determine whatthat welfare is used for.

MS. COLEMAN: But you don't feel that it'sincumbent on the Federal Government to atleast set up minimum standards. You even -

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes.

MS. COLEMAN: Not to see to the welfareof all its citizens in terms of some interest In

housing, some interest in food.

MR. BUCKLEY: Absolutely not.

MR. BUCKLEY: It's irrelevant to my book.Of course, I definitely endorse any driveagainst welfare chiseling, obviously. It's likeendorsing any drive against income taxchiseling. I endorse them both. But thereason I even mentioned this in my book isto say in California people are tryingsomething. There's no reason to suppose it'sgoing to succeed. It might not succeed, butI'm saying that they can't try it with thekind of authority and the kind of exercise ofingenuity as long as the whole thingthreatens to be preempted by the FederalGovernment.

The notion the Federal Governmentshould have anything to do with Californiawelfare practices is to me preposterous. It'switchcraft. It's every bit as much to indulgethe superstitious instincts of people as thenotion that you can alchemically turn thebay out here into gold by certainincantations. So I say go ahead andexperiment with it. Suit yourself. I don't livein California. Do it your way. But don'tpreempt social Californian energy viaWashington bureaucracy and fool yourselfinto thinking it's free.

MS. COLEMAN: No, I'm asking if youendorse that.

12 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 13

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, 60 percent. That's notvast.

MR. RUSSIN: All right. And your argumentis clearly weighted toward Catholicproblems.

MR. BUCKLEY: It's not as vast as Nixon'splurality over McGovern.

MR. RUSSI N: No, but your argument isweighted as a Catholic problem, and there'sno problem with that, and the other part ofyour reform -

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it's a problem with alot of people.

MR. RUSSIN: The other part of yourreform - Yes, I know but I'm not going toquarrel with that - is to do away withbussing in effect. What are you offeringblack people? You've got the white-collarworkers off your back.

MR. BUCKLEY: I'm not offering anybodyanything except on the assumption that thatwhich white people want is that which blackpeople want also, which is sovereignty overtheir own affairs. God knows, if you'd spentthe last few years living in New York, youwould walk away convinced that the onlything they want is sovereignty over theirschools.

MR. RUSSIN: You dismiss that as animportant factor.

MR. BUCKLEY: I do, yes, but I don't want,once again, to impose my system ofpriorities on theirs. I think that educationcertainly begins with some notion that theparents ought to have as many advantages asthey possibly can. Ideally they would havethe same advantages they have in privateschools, which is why I'm tempted by thevoucher system. But certainly they oughtnot -

MR. RUSSIN: Tempted, but not very'persuaded I gather.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, because I wantedonly to advocate in this book reforms that Icould confidently expect would be passed inthe next two or three years.

(laughter)

MS. COLEMAN: To save a lot of trouble.

MR. RUSSIN: If we could get maybe justbeyond procedure, I'm always curious whenI read your proposals as to what you reallythink can be done about this incrediblechasm and growing chasm of racial hostility,with which schools are clearly connectedand to which your only solution thus far is,well, just do away with the bussing part.

MR. BUCKLEY: That's certainly wheremost of the cordite has been in the lastperiod. This is a democracy, you know, and90 percent of the white people don't wantforced bussing and something like 80percent of the black people. Now that's thenearest thing to a consensus sincePhiladelphia, and why we let someanthropologist in some court somewhere tellus that under the circumstances we've got tomove differently is something I seek toexplain in another part of that same chapter.

MR. RUSSIN: I'm not a great fan of bussing,but I quarrel with the 80 percent. Itcertainly isn't true in this town where thereis considerable unhappiness about bussingfrom various minority <;:ommunities, but Ithink they're more happy with that thanwith what they had before, the vastmajority.

MR. BUCKLEY: San Francisco breaks a lotof rules, but I'm quoting figures drawn froma study published by Professor Freeman inCalifornia and I assume they're accurate.

In any case, once again, I just don'tknow where the Supreme Court got the kindof authority which it is using in a ratherdisturbing way for people who arehigh-spirited republicans, that all of a suddenit finds itself not merely as an agency thatconciliates between the Congress and theConstitution but also finds itself as a greatmoral force.

MR. RUSSIN: Well, I think it does it,obviously, for the very simple common sensething that if you had a kid you would muchrather him go to school, to take an Easternexample, in Scarsdale than the upper westside of Manhattan. It just figures. And that'sthe problem all over because it's a betterschool.

MR. BUCKLEY: It's a better school, sure.

MS. COLEMAN: You accept the Browndecision so why is it so difficult for you toaccept the Supreme Court's moral decisionto back that up saying that the way that we

see to do that is integration with bussing? Or,in the instance that's been happening ofsuburbs versus inner-city schools -

MR. BUCKLEY: For all the defects of theBrown decision, it does appeal to an idea inthe Fourteenth Amendment which isequality; but equality is something that isnot appealed to, for instance, by thedecisions in Detroit and in Richmond whichsay precisely it's going to matter now whatcolor your skin is because we need 200white people here and we need 300 blackpeople here.

MR. RUSSIN: Precisely because there's aninequality because of that situation. It's stillan appeal to equality. The schools outside ofDetroit are better than the schools insideDetroit, and it's absolute fact.

MS. COLEMAN: But Mr. Buckley raises thepoint by referring to Arthur Jensen andHerrnstein - raises the IQ argument, which Iwas very surprised to see you throw in there,especially since -

MR. BUCKLEY: Why?

MS. COLEMAN: Well, you refer to Mr.Jensen as a scholar; he's really a physicistwho has gotten into the genetic IQ game in away that I find rather spurious and that hasbeen, I feel, refuted all over the pl.ace.

MR. BUCKLEY: Jensen's a physicist? Is thattrue?

MS. COLEMAN: Yes.

MR. BUCKLEY: Is that true?

MR. RUSSIN: I'm not an expert on Jensen.I'll defer to Ms. Coleman.

MS. COLEMAN: Yes, he's not a geneticist.He is a physicist who has written on geneticsand IQ, and you referred to him as a scholarand his argument -

MR. BUCKLEY: No, excuse me. I can't letthis go. He has not written on genetics andIQ. I don't know what you're talking about.

MS. COLEMAN: He's written on IQ as agenetic -

MR. BUCKLEY: No, these are inferencesand deductions. He has not written ongenetics and IQ, and Arthur Jensen's studies,

in my experience, have not been invalidatedeven though, God knows, they've beensubjected to the kind of scrutiny thatnothing has since the Ten Commandments.

MS. COLEMAN: I'll give you some paperson it. But in any case you refer, to back upthis argument - and Joe's saying thatScarsdale schools are better than inner cityschools. You agree but your point in thebook is that, well, it might not much matterbecause their IQ level is inherited and it'sless anyhow and you go -

MR. BUCKLEY: I didn't say it wasinherited.

MS. COLEMAN: You refer to it as a factwhen you're talking about Herrnstein alsowriting about it and saying it doesn't makeany difference because it's reallyenvironment and heredity. I mean, I findthat really shocking because I feel that thattakes us back, you know, 50 years, that ithas been refuted and that it's saying itdoesn't matter how much money you pumpin and-

MR. BUCKLEY: In my opinion, Herrnsteinhas not been refuted. In my opinion, hedoesn't begin to say the kind of things thatyou suggest he does. He is a hobgoblin of aparticular set of egalitarians who simplydon't wa nt science to muscle in on theirconclusions. Even if he's 100 percent right,it still makes a hell of a lot of Negroes a hellof a lot more important than a hell of a lotof whites, so what?

Unfortunately, the time is up. Thankyou very much.

14 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 15