“I’m fully prepared not to become president of the United
States,” Laurence Kotlikoff told me, more than an hour into a telephone
interview Saturday. “That could happen.”
Well, that’s a relief. At least we won’t have two losing
presidential candidates challenging the results of the election two weeks from
Tuesday. But let’s be honest: You probably weren’t lying awake at night
worrying about how Kotlikoff will react if he loses. You probably didn’t even
know he was running.
Kotlikoff is a Harvard-trained economist, a Boston
University professor and, yes, a candidate for president. He is on the ballot
in only two states (Louisiana and Colorado), but he is eligible to win as a
write-in candidate in most of the others, meaning that unlike, say, Republican
vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, he could theoretically be elected
president Nov. 8.1
Emphasis, of course, on “theoretically.” In reality,
Kotlikoff has effectively zero chance of winning, not least because he has
little name recognition and no serious strategy for changing that. (More about
that in a moment.) But long-shot though he may be, Kotlikoff is not a crank.
He’s a respected and — within academic circles — well-known economist with
legitimate credentials and serious ideas.
The animating principle behind Kotlikoff’s campaign is
simple: Today’s Americans are running up a huge bill — both literal and
figurative — and leaving the next generation to pay it. On fiscal policy,
Kotlikoff thinks that official government budget estimates vastly understate the
future cost of Social Security, Medicare and other programs. On foreign
relations, Kotlikoff argues that by letting North Korea develop nuclear
weapons, the U.S. is leaving a far less secure world for future generations.
And on climate change, Kotlikoff believes not only that the U.S. is failing to
take the threat seriously, but also that many well-intentioned policies are
making the problem worse.
“We’re not disclosing honestly the burdens that we’re
leaving for our kids,” Kotlikoff said. “I don’t think we can just leave our
kids at risk.”
Kotlikoff is known among economists for what is called
“generational accounting,” which is the idea that the government should
evaluate policies based on how they will affect spending and revenue far into
the future — much further than the 10-year budget window that is standard now.
For example, the government has promised to pay Social Security benefits for
Americans working today; paying those benefits will fall to the next generation
of Americans, yet that obligation doesn’t show up on the government’s balance
sheet. Kotlikoff estimates that if we account for the full cost of all the
government’s long-term obligations, projected out into the distant future, the
true “fiscal gap” between what we owe and what we collect in tax revenue is
about $200 trillion, more than 15 times the official national debt.
Kotlikoff’s approach has plenty of critics, who argue that
generational accounting is hard to interpret and requires looking much further
into the future than is realistically possible. (Economists struggle to predict
what will happen next month, let alone 100 years from now.) But the idea also
has prominent backers. A 2013 bill requiring the government to provide
generational accounting estimates drew the backing of hundreds of economists,
including 17 Nobel laureates, and was sponsored by, among others, Sen. Tim
Kaine, now Hillary Clinton’s running mate.
Some of Kotlikoff’s other ideas likewise have mainstream
backing in economics, if not in politics. He wants to overhaul the tax code to
tax spending rather than income, which he argues would make it harder for the
rich to avoid taxes while eliminating provisions that can discourage the poor
from working more. He wants to institute a tax on carbon to fight climate
change.2 And he wants to replace existing tax credits with a lump-sum payment
for every American, an idea that, in various forms, has been drawing increased
attention from researchers on the left and the right.
Some of Kotlikoff’s other ideas are less mainstream. He wants
to limit legal immigration because he believes it is pushing down wages for
low-skilled American workers and contributing to a “population explosion” that
could lead to overcrowded cities. (He sees illegal immigration as a relatively
small problem.) “Boston will turn into Manila,” he said, referring to the
Philippines’ capital, which is among the world’s most densely populated cities.
His stance on immigration is an odd position for someone worried about the
long-term costs of Social Security and other programs; most economists see
immigration as a crucial way of supplementing the workforce as U.S. birth rates
fall. (Kotlikoff has laid out all of his proposals in a 158-page policy book
available on his website.)
Academics of Kotlikoff’s pedigree usually try to influence
policy from inside the system, not by running for president.3 Kotlikoff said he
has tried the conventional approach, testifying before Congress, serving as a
consultant for various agencies and foreign governments, and working at Ronald Reagan’s
Council of Economic Advisers early in his career. But he said he has become
convinced that politicians will never embrace the kind of policies he believes
the U.S. needs. (He may be right — Kotlikoff’s proposals include such political
nonstarters as cutting Social Security and eliminating Medicare.)
“I’m talking about radical reform,” Kotlikoff said. “We’re
not going to get radical reform unless we have a president of the United States
who pushes for radical reform.”
Kotlikoff swears he is not running merely to spread his
ideas — he wants to win. But if that’s true, he isn’t doing much to make it
happen. He has essentially no paid staff,4 has run no television ads and
doesn’t hold campaign rallies. His campaign appears to consist mostly of
emailing journalists and complaining that they are ignoring him — which, apart
from a few stories when he first declared his candidacy, we mostly have. “I
expected a whole lot more press,” Kotlikoff told me.
Still, Kotlikoff remains convinced that there is still time
for his campaign to “go viral.” He said he hoped people would read this story,
visit his website, then pass his message on. That, in the end, may be
Kotlikoff’s most radical belief: that in an election year dominated by personal
attacks and campaign theatrics — not to mention deep mistrust of experts and
elites — policy proposals will carry the day.
