News stories from Saturday May 7, 1977

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

The share of Social Security taxes paid by employers would be increased by billions of dollars a year under a proposal that the administration will make to Congress. Administration officials said the increase, and a smaller one for employees and the self-employed, would not take effect before 1979 and would be phased over three years. The administration has decided to ask Congress to remove the salary limitation on Social Security deductions for employers. [New York Times] Federal policy on urban aid would be fundamentally changed under a bill the House is expected to approve this week. Millions of dollars in federal aid would be shifted from the Sunbelt to the older cities of the Northeast and Northwest. New York is one of the cities that would benefit. It would get more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the next three years in additional money for community revitalization if the bill is passed intact. [New York Times] The rejuvenation of Atlantic City that the gambling casinos is expected to bring will be done, it seems, largely at the expense of many poor and elderly people. A third of the city's 40,000 permanent residents are on welfare, and many of that third live in an area being sought by speculators anticipating a construction boom. City officials deny that it is official policy to drive the poor out, but about 700 to 1,000 people already have been dispossessed. [New York Times] A fundamental demographic change is under way among the South's rural blacks. Newly available census figures indicate that fewer blacks are leaving for the cities and that of those who do, three of every five now head for Southern cities. They are remaining in the rural South primarily because industry has begun to move in, not because farming has suddenly become popular or profitable. [New York Times] Broad general agreement on combatting unemployment was reached by the leaders of the seven major industrialized democracies at the first session of their conference in London, but their unanimity weakened when they later turned to the question of the spread of nuclear weapons. Among the economic issues, the leaders had no apparent trouble in deciding that they must resist pressures to raise tariff barriers, find a better way of dealing with the problem of indebtedness to the oil-exporting nations and, above all, press for substantial economic growth as a means of creating jobs and increasing trade among their countries. [New York Times] President Carter's proposals for curbing the spread of nuclear technology emerged as the most divisive issue of the conference. A senior American official said the participants had not been able to draft acceptable language for a declaration on a common position among the seven nations that was to be announced tomorrow. [New York Times] Unemployment among the young is likely to be the major theme of the economic meeting in London, and its seriousness is expected to be emphasized in the final communique on Sunday. Officials said that the conference was likely to produce agreement on a common Western economic strategy simultaneously directed at fighting unemployment and inflation. [New York Times]