The Antiplanner was saddened to hear that William Niskanen, who for more than two decades chaired the board of the Cato Institute, died yesterday morning after suffering a stroke Tuesday night. Niskanen was a tenured professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1975 when he took a job as chief economist with the Ford Motor Company. He was fired from that job five years later when Ford wanted to lobby for restrictions on auto imports and he told them, “a common commitment to refrain from seeking special favors [from the government] serves the same economic function as a common commitment to refrain from stealing.”
After a short stint teaching at UCLA, President Reagan named Niskanen to his Council of Economic Advisors, and Niskanen eventually chaired that council. His obituary doesn’t say so, but I am pretty sure he was dismissed by Reagan in 1985 for disagreeing with some of the deficit spending that Reagan was incurring.
Niskanen’s habit of putting principle over self-interest made him a perfect fit for the Cato Institute, which–for those who don’t know–is sort of the Earth First! of free-market groups. Where Earth First!’s motto is “No compromise in defense of Mother Earth,” Cato’s motto could be “No compromise in defense of personal and economic liberty.” Cato was only six years old in 1985 and it counted itself fortunate to be able to attract a scholar of Niskanen’s caliber.
