The Future Begins on Nov. 4

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Under the pressure of the campaign, Carter, with some reluctance, has also proposed a tax cut for next year. It would provide $27.6 billion in relief to taxpayers and a faster write-off for business depreciation. Surprisingly, for a Democratic plan, a larger share of the savings would go to business than under Reagan's proposal. Carter would give individuals just $11.9 billion in cuts; business would get $15.7 billion. But there is one key difference: Carter's plan for individual reductions would be used to offset the scheduled 1981 increase in Social Security taxes. This would reduce taxes for everyone with incomes up to $29,700 a year (next year's cutoff point for Social Security payroll taxes), but have no effect on the marginal rates for workers who make more. This, say conservative economists, would limit the tax cut's effect on providing individual incentives for increased productivity and willingness to seek work.

Defense. Reagan has long demanded an increase in spending to strengthen both strategic and conventional military forces. Carter, who had come into office with a promise to reduce the military budget, now proposes to increase it next year by $24 billion. Both advocate higher salaries to make the all-volunteer armed forces more attractive, particularly to needed specialists who are leaving the services in alarming numbers.

On specific weapons, Reagan has criticized Carter's decision to delay production of the neutron bomb and cancel the B-l bomber. Carter contends that the cruise missile has made the B-l obsolete but he has, with some campaign fanfare, suggested that a bomber employing "stealth" radar-baffling technology may be built instead. Both candidates support the new MX missile, although they differ about how the land-based weapon should be deployed.

There is one defense issue on which Reagan's position is more dangerous than Carter's: how to reach an effective strategic arms agreement with the Soviet Union. The Reagan proposal to scrap SALT II and renegotiate an entirely new treaty is simply not plausible, as Carter discovered to his chagrin when he tried the same thing with Moscow in 1977 (see box). There is no doubt that Reagan's stance runs the higher risk of a new, costly and counterproductive arms race, although he has modified an earlier position that the U.S. be militarily superior to the Soviets to an insistence that the U.S. have a "margin of safety" over the Soviets.