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Page HILLS OUTLOOK Saturday February 1W Halton Hills Outlook Is published each Saturday by The Hill Herald home newspaper of Halloa Ilills a division or Canadian Newspapers Com limited at Guelph Street Georgetown Ontario 3Z6 Second Cass Mall Registered Number 8772201 PUBLISHER Don Grander ADVERTISING MGR Carl Sinke EDITOR Dave Rowney MARKETING REPRESENTATIVES Sharon Hoi lings worth Lathy Karen SPORTS Mike Turner Elaine Kutyshyn STAr Brian MacLeod heryl PRODUCTION Dave Hastings PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS Mary Lou Foreman Mike Pauline Miller PRESSROOM I OKI- MAN Brian ASSISTANT Outlook A growing need for Twos a Crowd indexed pensions Business Business Analyst Thomson News Each dollar In 1967 was worth only cents by A worker who retired In would hove seen the purchasing power of his pension Income shrink by nearly threcouartors in years assuming he lived that long With more people retiring at age or 60 and with inflation forecast to be as bad In the future as It was In the past Ihc need for indexed pen Is growing Some companies say they can at ford Indexed pensions but others led by Chrysler Canada have agreed to protect their retired workers from Inflation The pot en tin Impact on the economy Is tremendous Pension savings will grow to meet Increased demand while employees may save less their own plans In- fonnetrica Ltd an Ottawa based research firm points out In a recent report Meanwhile the burden of risk from Inflation and Interest rates will be shifted to the employer so a rapid rise in Inflation could hit employers hard Indexed pensions will push up the cost of doing business warns William M Mercer Ltd a company that adviies employers on plans Prices will rise and jobs will the firm says The move toward pension Index Is in part a hangover of the 190s when Inflation surpassed 12 per cent and to the fit surpluses sitting in corporate pension funds which some employers have tried to withdraw and spend As It stands the Task Force report on indexed pensions appears likely to be adopted by the Ontario Government which some employers fuming The proposed indexing simply put calls for pensions to in crease by one percentage point less than cent of the ircase In the consumer price index modest enough proposal The Mercer report points to Ine quities in the proposed system and the burden it would place on the On tario The problem as ln- points out is the employers would face and the possible risks to their future vival if inflation were to skyrocket Instead of their teeth about costs employers might con sider the possible benefits they could reap by offering retirement Indexed pensions could do wonders for employee morale SOCIAL At Issue is the larger social ques tion of who is responsible for the well being of Canadian workers business government or the workers themselves Government Is held ultimately responsible In the end though the burden falls on the taxpayer Business likes to think it con deliver goods and services more then government whether housing medical care or postal delivery Why not pensions too Once the issue of indexed pensions is settled we should look at the role of business In education and retrain ing Again the government bean the burden while business sits back and complains that workers are poorly trained Altnough Mercer sees indexed pensions as a mojor new interven tion shifting responsibility from to business would be In with ilemonds for lower taxes and less government Much discussion will take place between now and the time these changes come into effect It would be helpful if we could keep In mind that a fundamental shift In social philosophy in being proposed one in which potential hardship would be shifted from the personal to the cor pora It sphere Twos a Crowd Br BILL BUTTLE lJfO nana ar I YOU OILED THE HINGES Its just too easy to be cynical glib Weirs View Quite frankly it Just far too easy and glib to be a cynic Anyone can be one All you need to be a cynic is a pass ing knowledge of history or of human nature Those who have a passing knowledge of both arc well on the way to developing a drinking problem Still no matter how hard you try on sheer principle to remain positive and optimistic are times whtn moments you may even begin quistloning values and institutions which he at the very heart of western democratic culture Just now In fact I find myself haunted by exactly this sort of question To wit li possible Just possible that the winners of beauty pageants are not always paragons of modesty someneis and traditional virtue Whoops There I go already my shameful cynicism shows through In Ihe very fact I just referred to beauty pageants as beauty pageants As pageant organizers constantly re mind us pageants are not beauty pageants at all since they have nothing to do with beauty These cants lire concerned with Intelligence grate than with something is and shallow physical This is why the I THINK WEIL NOT REFER TO THESE AS TERMINAL CASES Tin judges wi told pay partic attention to poise and the arils tic abilities of Ihc contestants This Is why contains a segment in which the contestants play the violin ever watched a pageant on TV you It know that many of them sing almost as well as Luciano models bikini But I digress The point Is that we are constantly assured that beauty pag cants exist to celebrate the very best young North American womanhood This is what distinguishes Ihem from say wit shirt contests which exist to urn well let snot get into fine points of definition that why it sso dlstres sing to read little news items which call our trusting assumptions Into doubt The first blow fell a back us you II recall when the reigning Miss was deposed after Penthouse inagaime pub I is photos of her in Ihe altogether with another young woman thus giving a whole new resonance to title of Miss Con geniality This unfortunate memory had ahem barely begun to fade when it wos discovered a couple of the male of a subsequent Miss America runner up had belonged to the Ku Klux Klan At very least this could be re larded as stroke of lamentably bad nek With tens of millions of attractive young women In the U S you d think the Judges might have managed to choose one whose menfolk were active in the Rotary club instead A year or so ago scandal rocked Miss Universe pageant when several of the contestants were accused of I He gaily padding their bathing suits This of course illustrates another key difference between a beauty pag and a wet Tshirt contest You can cheat Inabeauty pageant Last month controversy out in the reglonol run to the Mrs Amir pageant when the wlnnir in I first runner up in one state bad to slip down becausi gol Obviously hi 5 can nail con aider a scandal wi dealing with married union I me in could possibly object to a married soman getting pregnant It semis 1 bit old fashioned that sail Kill Mad Canadians who spent the last two weeks perched in front of their television sets eagerly awaiting that elusive Olympic gold must be get gold in this year s Olympics for Canada so attention often turns to other aspects of the Gomes like Great Britain one man ski Jumping team dubbed the Logic But anyone watching medal presentations each evening from Calgary downtown core has to wonder what visiting athletes think about Canada Imagine yourself going abroad for the first time from an eastern block country barely able to ask for after noon tea in English watching the on there each night They must think they re stuck In a bad 1950s cowboys and Indians movie If television coverage is any In dication of what going on in Calgary cowboy hats and Indian war dances arc the norm for cultural Now there nothing wrong with attempting to show the world what It s like to be Canadian Without a doubt we re all proud to travel to other countries telling people were Canadian not American But those lathy stetsons and feathered head dresses can be termed typical Canadian culture Trui Olympics are in Calgary and they re proud of their western heritage so cowboy hats arc to be ex peeled but Indian heads on the back of medals a bit too far there got to be more to culture in the While North than cowboy hats and painted faces Anyone watching the coverage In foreign countries must think we Jump on our horses and chase In down the street with lassos fly after the saloons close What they probably don know Is Canadian Indians tend to be exiled to reserves with little real Incentive to espouse their traditional heritage Hut when worldwide television come watching we haul out those Indians and parade them around in fancy costumes and painted faces dancing to drumbeats for all the world to sei It would be nice if Indian rcserva lions which are supposedly geared to the preservation of their culture really reflected their heritage but sadly that just not the case No doubt visitors to Calgary arc having a jolly good time Out television audiences around the world must be scratching their heads wondering what Canada is all TJiere got to be more to show the world during these two weeks of in tensely high profile than cowboys and Indians POETS CORNER in 111