Schultze Delivers Godkin Lecture On Tax Incentives

Charles L. Schultze, former director of the federal budget bureau, began this year's series of Godkin Lectures last night by calling for a restructuring of tax incentives to make "public goals into private interests."

Speaking to an audience of 350 at the Science Center, Schultze said that the public's rising expectations of government intervention and a "newly awakened sense of social justice" have spawned a massive, often inefficient bureaucracy.

"I've heard that the oceanographic regulations of the last four years already stand 17 1/2 feet high," he said.

"Incentives are more likely than centralized regulations to achieve effective and efficient results," Schultze said. Such incentives include gasoline and pollution taxes which serve the public good without using "the command-and-control techniques of government bureaucracy," he added.

Schultze will deliver the remaining two Godkin Lectures on December 2 and 9. The lectures in political economics are sponsored by the Kennedy School of Government.