July 8, 1984

Several experts on Social Security today criticized President Reagan's latest statements about the program, saying that his analysis of benefits in relation to payroll tax contributions was misleading. In a television interview made public Friday, Mr. Reagan said he would not ''pull the rug out'' from under people now receiving Social Security benefits. But he said, ''There is a possibility - well, probability - that many people, young people now paying in, will never be able to receive as much as they're paying.'' Mr. Reagan did not elaborate. In an interview last March he said that demographic changes were ''leading inevitably toward another day of reckoning'' for such benefit programs.

MICHELLE MILBERG of Westport has arranged photographs of her family, including Samantha the poodle, on her wall and placed a Michael Jackson poster above her bunk. Peter Katz of Fairfield has kissed his parents in the parking lot for the sixth summer in a row and bid them goodbye until visiting day. And Norman Feitelson is sitting in his office, reflecting on the rubber hamburgers and phony pickles he has been served and the 15 turtles that were deposited in his screened porch one night last August. He is wondering what this season's pranks will be. Summer camp has started, the season for unpacking trunks stuffed with suntan lotion and insect repellent and for being grouped into Indian tribes with names like Iroquois and Pequot.

The record book now shows that Martina Navratilova has beaten Chris Evert Lloyd in 12 straight matches, but the entry for the Wimbledon final today deserves an asterisk because the challenger raised a waning rivalry to a new level. The 7-6, 6-2 victory, achieved in glorious sunshine before a Centre Court crowd fizzy with excitement, gave Miss Navratilova her fifth Wimbledon singles title, her third in a row, and evened her 11-year rivalry with Mrs. Lloyd at 30 victories apiece. Miss Navratilova, who earned $133,000 for the triumph, has now won five consecutive Grand Slam tournaments and 218 of her last 223 matches. In the men's final Sunday, the defending champion, John McEnroe, who has lost only one match this year, will play Jimmy Connors, the winner here in 1974 and 1982.

WASHINGTON THE selection of a running mate is traditionally a way to heal a party's wounds. But last week the process itself emerged as a potential threat to Democratic unity and Walter F. Mondale's hopes for a peaceful convention. Throughout the spring, divisions grew naturally out the primary process. But this new strain is mainly of Mr. Mondale's own making. It was the former Vice President who invited the parade of Vice Presidential aspirants, in which last week Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of Queens, Mayor Henry Cisneros of San Antonio and Governor Martha Layne Collins of Kentucky make the trek to North Oaks, Minn. The ostensible reason was to give Mr. Mondale a chance to look over the field - seven so far. But the process has prompted intense lobbying from factions eager to influence him and may, in the end, limit his freedom of choice.

IN Pratt & Whitney's sprawling machine-tool factory here, an unsettling quiet has set in. Many of the assembly bays in the hangar-like room stand empty, parking spots are easy to come by in the company lot and workers hover over aging equipment that has been dulled by decades of use. Trounced by imports and struggling to fatten an anemic order book, the plant here, like the rest of the machine-tool industry, is grappling with its worst crisis since the Depression. Business should have improved markedly by now in this once-thriving industry, which makes the high-precision metal-cutting tools essential for producing such things as automobile fenders, airplane fusilages and the machines needed by other industries. But the business continues deep in the doldrums, with no letup in sight. As many other industries surge ahead, propelled forward by the country's booming economic recovery, the machine-tool industry is still in crisis. Orders, which analysts estimate could reach about $2.8 billion this year, are stuck at half their 1979 levels and employment, at 67,000 workers, wavers around 30 percent below its peak at that time. While American industry is operating at over 80 percent of capacity, machine- tool manufacturers are treading water at just 60 percent of capacity. Imports have become such a significant factor that they now account for almost 40 percent of the market, double the level of only five years ago. Although there has been a modest rise in orders in the last year, orders remain so weak that executives and analysts are starting to realize that the industry is undergoing a sharp, and perhaps irreversible, contraction.