Janeway

I will comment on one statement in the column by Eliot Janeway (Opinion, Dec. 11). He wrote: “A deficit jump will jump tax rates--at the worst possible time--when incomes (adjusted for the higher cost of living) are declining for the 15th consecutive year. . . .”

The official figures for national personal income (national income less undistributed corporate profits and plus welfare and other government transfers to persons) are prepared by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis and are available in various sources. I have used the statistical tables in the 1988 Economic Report of the President and the latest (August) issue of the Commerce Department’s Survey of Current Business. These data are used by all responsible writers.

In the past 15 years, from 1972 to 1987, real per capita personal income, adjusted for inflation, rose from $10,058 to $12,796, an increase of 29%, and it continues to rise every year in a non-recessionary economy. Real per capita GNP increased by 27% during that period, and it is to be expected that national personal income, total and per capita, should change at about the same rate as GNP.

AMOR GOSFIELD

Santa Barbara