Walter Wolfgang Heller was an economics professor at the University of Minnisota. He then became the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 1961 to 1964 under President Kennedy and President Johnson. His main focus early in his career was state and local taxation, and he was among the first economists to recognize that tax deductions and tax preferences result in a smaller income tax base, thus resulting in a need for higher marginal tax rates given a certain amount of revenue.
Heller helped develop the wage guideposts implemented under President Johnson. According to Samuelson in "Economics, 6th Edition Textbook" these guideposts were as follows:
"The average money-wage increase is to be no higher than the average increase in physical productivity; but the increase in each industry is to be divorced from the increase in physical productivity in that industry itself, the difference to be taken up in price reductions to consumers of items with unusually high productivity growth (wheat? autos?) and price increases to industries with unusually slow productivity growth (teaching?); departures from the common wage increase are to be permitt ed primarily where an industry needs to raise wage rates to attract new labor entrants and where a declining industry needs to lower wages in order to expedite exit."
Works by Walter Wolfgang Heller:
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