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To The Editor:

Several yearsago the Federal Government made it possible for self-employedindividuals, i.e., farmers, architects, doctors, etc., to set upretirement programs by forming personal corporations (P.C.'s). Thisprogram seemed simple enough at its inception, but today the problemis becoming more and more complicated, and now it takes a lawyer andan accountant just to keep up with the increasing number of federalregulations. If a single individual has this much trouble, how can acorporate enterprise cope with its innumerable regulations andmassive paper work?

The FederalRegister, which lists all the government regulations, consisted of2,411 pages at its inception in 1936, but today has grown to astaggering 70,000 pages in length!

The enginewhich provides all this activity in Washington, D.C., is Congress,and in the first session of the 95th Congress an overwhelming 14,000bills were introduced; many of these bills being specificallydesigned to increase business cost, (i.e., minimum wage laws alreadyreflect a mandatory inflation rate of 13 percent per year for thenext three years) and many serve to limit one's ability to conductbusiness efficiently!

Since onlythree percent of Congressional staff people have had any businessexperience, many of the bills are being misdrafted and in the wordsof Economist Milton Friedman, "There is no conspiracy. Sincere,well-meaning people are doing harm."

Justice LouisBrandeis should be heeded "Experience should teach us to be most onour guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes arebeneficent....the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidiousencroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but withoutunderstanding."

Mr. Robert H.Malott, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of theF.M.C. Corporation, has recently "Corporate Activism to promote theCompetitive Enterprise system." He is deeply concerned aboutpreserving the economic system that has made ours the most prosperousnation on earth.

WalterWriston, chairman of Citiband, has warned, "an assault on one aspectof freedom is an attack on the whole as the framers of theConstitution were well aware. To think that the bell that tolls foreconomic freedom does not also toll for academic freedom or for thefreedom of the press is a delusion and a dangerous one."

Today manygroups attack the "establishment" and they represent essentially theproponents of radical social change. Institutions and industries havebeen bludgeoned into decline, and many have fallen from grace and ourAmerican economy has suffered.

The oneindustry in the United States that has not suffered has been ourUnited States Bureaucracy.

In 1950public employees accounted for one in every ten jobs, and today theynumber one in every five! Furthermore, in 1930 total governmentspending accounted for only 12 percent of the national gross product,and today it has grown to more than 31 percent! (In England in 1976the government consumed just under 60 percent of the national grossproduct.)

Need I remindyou that the government produces not a penny's worth of wealth. Itcan only take and spend our money.

Finally, letus not try to change the ethics, values, and traditional methods ofconducting business in foreign countries or change a practice thathas gone on for generations and generations. As a ship's surgeon in1938 for the Grace Lines, I was responsible not only for the healthof our crew and the passengers but also for clearing the ship forentry and foreign ports. It was the Grace Line's tradition based uponyears and years of competition ( this practice was also done by othershipping lines, but less well), to provide the local health officerwith vaccinations and other medical paraphernalia that he could uselocally and with other gifts and bribes in an effort to expedite ourship's clearance.

The systemworked well and the Grace Line vessels were rapidly cleared forentrance into all the harbors of the West Coast of South America. Weare abiding by local customs and not imposing our ethics and valueson the practice of a foreign country.

The samemight apply today to the Mideast, to the Far East, and so-forth wherewe must compete with German, Japanese, Korean, and other foreigncompetitors. Uncle Sam is naive, but why shouldn't he be for he isonly 200 years old!

Congressrecently passed a law providing a one million dollar fine and up tofive years imprisonment for a company "bribing" foreign officials. noother company in the world has been so virtuous.

As MalcombForbes has said, "Virtue has its price." Isn't it wonderful that wecan afford to pay it!

Bribing mayseem ethically repugnant, but in today's business world it iscompetitively necessary and is called simply a cost of operation. Itis practiced by no less than 220 other countries in this worldtoday.

William Simonrecently said the "private sector requires spokesmen and leaders whohave deep convictions and will stand up for them, for there are toomany who are deathly afraid of rocking the boat, and in so doing willunfortunately keep the boat leaking and slowly sinking."

Each of usmust accept the challenge of personal involvement, and not allow oureconomic system to be destroyed by our critics today, who,unfortunately, offer no better alternative.

Thankfully yours,

Charles E. Jacobson Jr., M.D.

45 Wyllys St.

Manchester, CT