This is probably more detail than most of your readers want! I thought it is important to lay out my method, however, to emphasize a few points.
First, I could do this for Sanders because he is running an issues campaign and has presented a coherent economic program where we can do this type of analysis. I couldn't do it, for example, for any of the Republican candidates because they haven't explained how they would finance the tax cuts they propose or what they would do with health care after repealing the ACA.
Second, this is a global analysis: the various attacks on Sanders have all been on particular aspects: too many taxes or too much spending. But the program needs to be assessed as a whole.
Third, while someone could criticize various aspects of my work, I used conventional methods and standard assumptions. No hocus-pocus or voodoo economics here: just the methods of the CBO and standard, orthodox economics.
Finally, I project very high rates of economic growth and growth in employment compared with the past 35 years. But not compared with earlier times, such as the 1960s. Some have said that I am too optimistic in my projections, but just as Senator Sanders proposes returning to the infrastructure spending, higher-education policy, some aspects of the regulatory regime, and the progressive tax policy of the Eisenhower and Kennedy/Johnson years, I assume that we can grow as quickly as in those times and have unemployment rates as low as in the 1950s and 1960s.
JB: Phew. No trying to decipher the jottings on the back of a cocktail napkin for you! What a massive undertaking, Jerry. And potentially so useful! Bernie's critics have been hell-bent on claiming that his numbers don't "add up". You show not only that they do, but that they point to some very positive ramifications elsewhere in the economy. This is major news. But, who's listening? Any reaction to your findings so far?
GF: Excellent question! There has been a withering barrage of attacks on Sanders, his health program, and his larger economic program. I expect attacks from the right, but have been surprised by attacked from liberals, including some who one might have expected to be sympathetic. As recently as 10 years ago, for example, Kenneth Thorpe advocated a national single payer health plan and wrote about the enormous savings such a plan would produce. Now, he attacks Sanders. I have long admired Paul Starr; I have been less impressed with his misleading attacks on Sanders.
It hasn't been all bad! I have heard from a lot of people, including professional colleagues and academicians, interested in the study and exciting about my findings. And I have had as much media attention as I can handle with over two dozen radio/TV/newspaper interviews in the last week alone. (I was on Radio New Zealand on Friday!) Honestly, all this attention has tired me out -- I still have my other research, administrative work (I chair the personnel committee in my college), and I teach both a graduate class (American Economic History) and our big undergraduate microeconomics class with 700 students. (Fortunately, my dog Beowulf comes to my classes to help raise my course evaluations. And I give out chocolate to the students.)
I would like to think that the report is helping to lift the public dialog and will encourage all the candidates to release enough detail about their program that people can evaluate them as I have evaluated Sanders. Meantime, I hope, at a minimum, that I have provided material for responsible journalists and others to understand better the full implications of the Sanders program.
JB: Me too, Jerry. Me too. Thanks so much for talking with me. It's always a pleasure!
***
*correction of typo: statement originally said "billion" instead of "trillion". Scott Baker, my fellow OEN editor, caught this. Thank you, Scott!
Money.cnn.com: Under Sanders, income and jobs would soar, economist says 2.8.2016
My previous interview with Jerry:
Econ Prof Protests Gross Distortion of Work by WSJ and Clinton Campaign 1.19.2016
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