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Captain Robert A. Stone - 7
September 14, 1948

A Congressman is likely to compare any retirement proposal with his own case. A Congressman retired for disability after five years will have con-tributed $3,750 and will get about $130 per month. The average pilot who is disqualified upon completing five years of service will have paid about $1,750 in taxes and will get, of course, $200 per month. A pilot's tax will not bear as high a ratio to his annuity as a Congressman's contribution to his benefit until the pilot has paid taxes for over ten years. A Congressman is likely to look down his nose a bit at the present proposal. His reaction to wiping out the five year requirement is likely to be the laugh commonly attributed to the equus caballus.

The second half of the question is "Why is his pension so small?" I am not sure whether this question is based on the assumption that the $200 mini-mum does not apply, or whether it is intended to ask why the $200 can't be $500, $600 or $700. In any event, the minimum is $200 for retirement for per-manent and total disability after five years of service (which includes creditable military service). Under the Railroad Retirement Act the maximum which would be payable to a person retiring on permanent and total disability after ten years of service would be $48, and the maximum payable upon retire-ment after five years of service under which Civil Service requirement would be (in the case of a cabinet officer) $93.75 per month with contributions of $4,500; the Congressman (as shown above) gets a better break than, say, the Secretary of State. A more pertinent question is not why the pension proposed is so small, but whether it is reasonable, no matter how good the case, for air line pilots to expect so much more favored treatment than any other group for which Congress has ever legislated, including the Congressmen themselves.

(6) A pilot can receive more liberal pensions than is proposed in the draft bill if (a) either the taxes are increased or the additional money is taken from the general revenue (i.e., paid by everybody) and Congress will pass whatever bill embodies the whole proposal; or (b) the pilots fly longer, live a shorter period after ceasing to fly, and have fewer wives and children than it is now reasonable to assume will be the case; or (c) the reserves can be made to yield more than 3 per cent net. Unless several of the possibili-ties materialize, the answer is "no".

(7) In legislation so far enacted with respect to survivors the Congress has laid down a policy of providing benefits to a survivor with respect to only one deceased person. In the case of the pilots this will presumably affect only parents, since the profession contains no mothers. The cost factor is infinitesimal. The question is whether, in anticipation of an extremely remote contingency, the pilots should ask Congress to place them in a category more favorable than that in which others in identical circumstances are placed. So far as I am aware, when an elderly couple with two sons in the railroad industry loses them both by death, their grief (and hunger) will not be less acute than would be the case if the sons were air line pilots.