If government “planners” hold office for short terms, then their decisions must follow the short-term political changes. If they are appointed for long terms, then they must follow the long-term political trends.
Vervon Orval Watts
Vernon Orval Watts was one of the leading free-market economists of the World War II and postwar eras. Watts was hired by Leonard Read in 1939 to be the economist for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, of which Leonard was executive director. Watts thereby became the first full-time economist to be employed by a chamber of commerce in the United States. Read later made Watts the leading economist at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). See Murray Rothbard’s memorial in Making Economic Sense.
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If government should take a man’s earnings because he wants to save too much, why should it not take them on the ground merely that someone else needs or wants them?
Murray Rothbard writes the introduction to the reprint of this 1952 gem. It is by V. Orval Watts, one of the leading anti-Keynesians of his time. He is writing during the great entrenchment of the Keynesian perspective within the economics profession
