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Yes & No. The lessons which Planner Ruml preaches may well fall on many deaf and angry ears. Diehard businessmen will rage at the union shop just as labor leaders will rage about union regulation. Budget balancers will howl at his deficit spending.
Even those who lean toward a compensatory budget might well question Planner Ruml's figures. The burden of arms a postwar U.S. may have to shoulder may well boost the budget far above $18 billion (ex-Treasury Counsel Randolph Paul has predicted a budget of $25 billion).
If that happens, Ruml's tax schedules might leave the U.S. with a $7 billion deficit, even at high employment. Or they might balance the budget, only to have full employment recede as soon as the balance was achieved, leading to new deficits. If either of these possibilities occurred, the Ruml plan would prove inflationary in the long run.
But the number of the complaints the book may stir up may well prove the measure of its value. In treading a narrow middle of the road between all manner of conflicting interests, Ruml has trod on many toes. But the toe-treading may perform a service for free enterprise.
Concluded Ruml: "Without a conception of freedom, the direction of business in the future will be at best tentative and uncertain. The clichés of freedom may become the mask [for] new exploitations. . . . Not 'freedom for business' but 'business for freedom' must be the objective of business leadership."