Planners, Go Home!

This tabulation takes no account of unfunded liabilities under our federal Social Security programs.

Communist Housing

Historically, the most convinc­ing documentation on frustrated planning comes directly from the planner’s fatherland.

No other nation in modern his­tory has attempted economic plan­ning on so vast a scale as Com­munist Russia. In the communist lexicon the Gosplan is the very beginning of economic life. As outlined by Saburov before the Twentieth Party Congress of 1956, the Gosplan develops production schedules not only for the entire national economy, but “for indi­vidual branches, for every enter­prise, building site, and collective and state farm.”

“This will permit determination and direction of the development of every enterprise over the com­ing years.”

The first major area of Bolshe­vik social planning was in “hous­ing for the masses.” Soon after the 1917 revolution, Lenin abol­ished private ownership in land, nationalized all privately-owned housing, and established an air­tight government monopoly in construction.

The first national housing pro­gram, a segment of the New Eco­nomic Policy, NEP, was launched in 1923, with great propaganda fanfare.

At that point, the total urban population of Russia averaged 6.45 square meters of living space per person. By 1932 the available living space was only 4.94 square meters per person, and by 1955, 4.78 square meters.

European public health social­ists in the nineteenth century had agreed upon 9 square meters per person (96.75 sq. ft.) as the mini­mum hygienic standard for urban living space.

Czarist Russia had achieved 7 square meters per capita in 1914 or about 78 per cent of the then accepted European socialist stand­ard for cities. By 1955 communist planners had pulled the Russian per capita housing area down to 53.1 per cent of the 1880 standard.

A Deteriorating Condition

By this record, the housing planners in Russia not only failed to keep abreast of normal popula­tion growth, but actually reduced average urban living space per capita. Urban population is four times what it was in 1923, but the total urban living area has ex­panded only by three. Urban hous­ing standards throughout Russia today are the most miserable in all Europe.

In the words of one reputable world authority on Russia, Soviet housing today, after 37 years of socialistic planning, “remains one of the worst blights on the com­munist record.” (Timothy Sosnovy, Problems of Communism, Washington, 1956, p. 31.)

Translated into our own meas­ure of feet and inches, urban Russians today have less than 51 square feet of living space per person, or about 205 square feet for a theoretical family of four. This would mean one room roughly 10 by 20 feet for every family. Current U.S. housing standards allow 320 square feet per person, or better than six times the most recently measured standard in Moscow, in 1955.

Such is the supreme accomplish­ment of planning in the first target area of communism—”housing for the masses.”

The Alluring Empty Vision

In Russian housing, as almost everywhere else in national plan­ning, the goals were not met chiefly because labor and materials were not supplied in the measure called for by the master plan. To quote Sosnovy: “Even the meager goals set in the plans went long unfulfilled, due to a discrepancy between the planned volume of building and the resources made available in both capital and labor.”

This documented national ex­perience reflects perhaps one deeper purpose of socialist plan­ning—to promise needy multi­tudes pie in the sky, without a moment’s practical thought how the promise may be realized. So­cialist planners gain stature and prestige, not so much by realiza­tion of their heady dreams, as by the intoxicating visions they pro­ject before the confused and dis­traught masses. The rosy promise—the alluring empty vision—is the political stuff on which social­ism thrives.

The promise of a million new houses at some indefinite future date will win far more votes and command much stouter political allegiance than will actual de­livery of one hundred real houses this year. Most Russians have been living in roseate houses-on order since 1918, but, concludes Sosnovy, “it is worth noting that the present living-space standard leaves the urban citizen substan­tially worse off than he was over forty years ago under the Czars.” This is one principal reason why the Kremlin dare not submit itself to an honest public appraisal by the people through the medium of a free election anywhere behind the Iron Curtain. Philosophers in every latitude and longitude de­clare it still is universally true that “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

How Will It Be Financed?

Defenders of socialism are quick to point out that every successful industry maintains a research and development agency to plan future growth.

The essential difference is that industrial planning is paid for by the industry as it moves forward. Professional political planning sometimes promises to be “self-liquidating,” but never is.

A striking example is our cur­rent national highway program. Although less than four years old, it is already about 25 per cent short of planned funds to finance the 1961 mileage. A program esti­mated at $33 billion when launched in 1956 is now estimated at $41 billion. Over and above the special new gasoline and rubber taxes earmarked for the roads fund, there is presently in sight by 1962 a deficit of $10 billion in the road financing plan.

If we are ever to put a net over our runaway public planners, budget officers at every level of government must adhere to one massive policy—no program may be received from any government planning group unless and until it shall be accompanied by a de­tailed scheme of new taxes to finance the proposals to complete realization. Plans too often are launched with a million-dollar ap­propriation when the total cost is recognized at $10 million over five years. “Let’s get it started,” runs the planners’ lingo, “and we’ll raise the extra money somehow!” This is precisely the technique of built-in budget increases cited by Secretary Mueller in his breath-taking tabulation of $750 billion in future federal obliga­tions. This is the stuff inflation is made of.

“Our hazard today,” Secretary Mueller concludes, “is not depres­sion or famine or plague or inva­sion or civil war. It is the ever-present threat of inflation. Free enterprise has blessed us with rec­ord prosperity and all the re­sources essential to unmatched growth. And we have peace.

“Shall we enter this decade’s Promised Land of unprecedented abundance? Or, by our own folly, shall we utterly ruin the brightest prospect that ever beckoned man­kind?”

The Secretary’s question likely will be answered by our future policy toward irresponsible govern­ment planners.

A five-year moratorium on pub­lic planning would offer at least a breathing spell—and a long over­due opportunity for every budget agency in government—local, state, and federal—to take a new financial bearing.

Can we escape the plague of planners?