Heller was born in
Buffalo, New York, to German immigrants, Gertrude (Warmburg) and Ernst Heller, a civil engineer. After attending
Shorewood High School in
Shorewood, Wisconsin, he entered
Oberlin College in 1931, graduating with a B.A. degree in 1935. Heller received his master's degree and doctorate degrees in economics from the
University of Wisconsin. As a
Keynesian, he promoted cuts in the marginal federal income tax rates. This tax cut, which was passed by President
Lyndon B. Johnson and Congress after Kennedy's death, was credited for boosting the U.S. economy. Heller developed the first "voluntary" wage-price guidelines. When the steel industry failed to follow them, it was publicly attacked by Kennedy and quickly complied. Heller was one of the first to emphasize that
tax deductions and tax preferences narrowed the income tax base, thus requiring, for a given amount of revenue, higher marginal tax rates. The historic tax cut and its positive effect on the economy has often been cited as motivation for more recent tax cuts by Republicans. The day after Kennedy was assassinated, Heller met with President Johnson in the
Oval Office. To get the country going again, Heller suggested a major initiative he called the "
War on Poverty", which Johnson adopted enthusiastically. Later, when Johnson insisted on escalating the
Vietnam War without raising taxes, setting the stage for an inflationary spiral, Heller resigned. In the early phases of his career, Heller contributed to the creation of the
Marshall Plan of 1947, and was instrumental in re-establishing the
German currency following
World War II, which helped usher an economic boom in
West Germany. Heller was critical of
Milton Friedman's followers and labelled them cultish: "Some of them are Friedmanly, some Friedmanian, some Friedmanesque, some Friedmanic and some Friedmaniacs." Heller joined the
University of Minnesota faculty as an associate professor of economics in 1945, left for a few years to serve in government, and returned in the 1960s, eventually serving as chair of the Department of Economics. He built it into a top-ranked department with spectacular hires, including future Nobel Prize winners
Leonid Hurwicz (2007),
Edward C. Prescott (2004),
Thomas J. Sargent (2011) and
Christopher A. Sims (2011). Heller was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962 and the
American Philosophical Society in 1975. Heller died in
Silverdale, Washington on June 15, 1987, at the age of 71. In 1999, the University of Minnesota renamed the Management and Economics Tower, located on the West Bank of their Minneapolis campus, Walter W. Heller Hall in honor of the late Walter Heller. The building houses student advising services in addition to providing classroom space. In 2010, the University of Minnesota Department of Economics announced the creation of the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute, honoring the legacies of Walter Heller and fellow Minnesota faculty member
Leonid Hurwicz. ==References==