Fred Rogers Fairchild

Fred Rogers Fairchild (1877–1966) was an American economist and educator.^[1] Fairchild was born in Crete, Nebraska. His father was Arthur Babbitt Fairchild, a descendant of Thomas Fairchild who settled in New England in 1639. He was a brother of Henry Pratt Fairchild, a sociologist and educator. Fairchild attended Doane College (AB, 1898) in Crete and Yale University (PhD, 1904). He also received an honorary LL.D. from Doane in 1929.^[2] Fairchild taught economics at Yale for many years.^[3] He was a holder of the Knox Chair of Economics.^[4] He was published widely, and his work included well received text books.^[5][6]

Fairchild was an honorary member of the National Tax Association, an educational association of taxation experts.^[7] His primary field of study was federal taxation in the United States. In a 1920 journal article published in the American Economic Review,^[8] Fairchild proposed a restructuring of the post-war U.S. federal taxation system in light of calls for the repeal of the excess profits tax enacted during wartime. He recommended, in order to ensure a "reasonable revenue to the government and justice to the various classes of taxpayers",^[9] that corporations be exempt from income taxes and instead that shareholder dividends become subject to the income tax.

Influence

In an article about the proper level for the capital gains tax,^[10] Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at NCPA, cites Fairchild,

Fred Rogers Fairchild of Yale probably spoke for most economists of the day when he said, "the weight of economic authority supports the theory that mere growth in value of capital is not income." (citing Fred Rogers Fairchild, "Federal Taxation of Income and Profits", American Economic Review, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 1921, p. 150.)

In a publication for the Foundation for Economic Education,^[11] Hans F. Sennholz writes,

In the academic world, a few eminent scholars such as B. M. Anderson, H. J. Davenport, F. R. Fairchild, F. H. Knight, and W. A. Paton scorned the New Deal which was holding sway in education and communication."

Publications

• Understanding our Free Economy, with Thomas J. Shelley. D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc. 1962.
• Economics, MacMillan Company. 1948.
• Elementary Economics: Volume I, with Edgar Stevenson Furniss and Norman Sydney Buck. MacMillan Company. 1927
• Elementary Economics: Volume II, with Edgar Stevenson Furniss and Norman Sydney Buck. MacMillan Company. 1927.
• Essentials of Economics, American book Co. 1931.
• A description of the "New Deal", John Clifford Lecture. MacMillan Company. 1934.

References