HERBERT STEIN
August 27, 1916-September 8, 1999
Author, PRESIDENTIAL ECONOMICS
Reviewed in the March 5, 1984, issue of
BUSINESS WEEK (photograph on p. 10),
"A Conservative Rebuff to Reagaonomics,"
by Seymour Zucker
Herbert Stein was on the Council of Economic Advisers (including as Chair) under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and professor of economics at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute afterwards.
The obituaries and appreciations (see here and here, for example), mention his wit and his original, or contrarian, approach to, and prescriptions for, U.S. national economic policy-making.
Some of what Dr. Stein said and wrote resonates quite strongly today: he was, for instance, scathing on the subject of supply-siders, "who hold that tax cuts will help bring the budget into balance by raising the gross national product enough to produce more, not less, tax revenue and that government expenditures can be reduced simply by cutting waste. Stein now refers," Zucker writes in Business Week, "to these theories as 'the economics of joy'" -- and, more importantly, demonstrates that they do not work in practice.
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