Peter Coy profiles in the latest Bloomberg Businessweek a potential alternative to the major-party candidates for president.
Move over, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. There’s an economist running for president. Laurence J. “Larry” Kotlikoff is jumping into the race as a write-in candidate. The co-author of a best-selling book on how to maximize your payment from Social Security is hoping to apply the principles of economics to fix what ails the United States.
Kotlikoff, 65, is running as a conservative on fiscal issues and arguing that the U.S. faces a $199 trillion “fiscal gap” while taking liberal positions on abortion, gay marriage, legalization of marijuana, incarceration, and gun control.
“Nobody who has actually studied this stuff and written about it has run for president,” Kotlikoff said of his economic expertise in an interview.
Typical of a professor, Kotlikoff has lavished attention on his platform—a 131-page document available for download through his campaign website—without bothering to line up endorsers and donors. In fact, Kotlikoff claims to be uninterested in campaign contributions. His website features a slogan: “Write Me In But Don’t Send Me a Penny.” …
… Kotlikoff’s positions on the issues are intriguing whether or not you think he has a prayer of reaching the White House. A sampling from his platform:
- “Our true fiscal indebtedness is 15 times larger than the $18 trillion you’ve been told our government owes. Its tremendous size can be summarized with these five words: Our government is dead broke.”
- “Social Security, with its maddening rules within rules within rules, [is] like a million Russian nesting dolls.”
- “Legal immigration is … fueling a veritable population explosion. Unless we reduce legal immigration, our population will rise by one-third – over 100 million people – in just 45 years.”
- “I [will] eliminate the corporate income tax, the personal income tax and the estate and gift tax. In their place, I institute a business cash flow tax, also called a value added tax (VAT), a progressive personal consumption tax, an inheritance tax and a tax on carbon.”
- “Traditional banking is unsafe at any speed. … You [should] just make all the financial intermediaries operate as 100 percent equity-financed mutual funds.”