Dr. Edward E. Leamer was the Vice-Presidential running mate on the write-in effort by economist Laurence Kotlikoff in 2016. Dr. Leamer is a professor of economics and Chauncey J. Medberry Chair at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA Anderson Forecast Director. He earned a BA in Mathematics from Princeton (1966), MA in Statistics (1970) and Ph.D. in Economics (1970) both from the University of Michigan. Dr. Leamer is also the author of several books and countless articles.
Kotlikoff/Leamer 2016 website: https://kotlikoff2016.com/
Q: I see one of your brothers is the author Laurence Leamer [here's a distracting aside early in the interview, many years ago I read Laurence Leamer's Ascent, his biography of Willi Unsoeld, someone I knew]. Laurence writes a lot about political figures. Were you two raised in a political atmosphere?
My brother Larry has written what seems to me a surprisingly apolitical book about Trump titled Mar-a-Lago. What I mean is that most conversations about Trump are either relentlessly negative or surprisingly positive, but this book is in the middle. (I chose these words to reveal which side I am on.)
I remember my father and mother watching the political conventions on TV, but while they were engaged in politics, my brothers and I were out playing baseball or building snow forts or fighting each other. Perhaps most importantly, we three boys were not taught at home to dislike any ethnic group and we arrived at adulthood ready and interested in interactions with everyone. On the other hand, our neighborhood was almost 100% middle class, white and Christian. I am of course turning your question about politics into one about prejudice, but these seem tightly woven together today.
Q: Had you ever considered running for office prior to 2016? How did you happen to be selected as Laurence Kotlikoff's running mate?
I have known Larry Kotlikoff for decades and count him as one of my closest friends. He called me in June of 2016 and explained that he was going to run for President. I was aware of how much he understood about the critical economics issues facing the country and told him that was great news. Then he said he wanted me to be his Vice President. I immediately said “sure.” I told my wife, and she said, with a smile on her face, “Don’t tell anyone.”
Q: Kotlikoff is linked to the term "generational accounting." Let's pretend I know nothing about economics and-- well, actually, I really do know nothing about economics. Can you summarize what "generational accounting" is all about in layman's terms and was it part of the 2016 campaign?
Larry Kotlikoff and I have both complained about the “fiscal child abuse” that is occurring in this country with $trillion dollar federal deficits, huge unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare, deteriorating infrastructure and incredible debt loads that are required to secure a college education. Larry’s “generational accounting” helps make clear how bad this really is for the next generation of taxpayers. My rhetoric was a bit different. I said that, if we were elected, every bill that passed through our offices would have to come with a Youth Impact Statement, indicating whether it was great for the youth of America or adverse. We are not going to get this very serious problem fixed until the millennials wake up to what is happening to their future and vote accordingly.
Q: Given the fact you are an educator in economics, it makes sense that during the 2016 campaign you talked about economics, education, and the economics of education. On the other end of the generational spectrum you addressed Social Security and Medicare. These are complex topics. Did you find it difficult to change your communication style from that of an academic to that of a political campaigner?
For a couple of decades, I have been teaching MBA’s and giving macroeconomic forecasts to broad audiences including government and business, and I have worked hard to find the language to make my opinions transparent to those audiences. While many economists think that opaque communication styles and intelligence are perfectly aligned, I have the opposite view. If you are so smart, you ought to be able to find a way of communicating that the rest of us can understand. Economics is quite simple; only the language is difficult.
For example, in discussing the impact that microprocessors are having on the job market, I pose the rhetorical question: Is a personal computer like a forklift or like a microphone? The forklift symbolizes the innovations of the industrial age. You may be ten times stronger than I am, but with a little bit of training we can do the job equally well: operating a forklift. Thus greater productivity and more equality. A microphone is quite different. It symbolizes the innovations in the post-industrial age. No amount of education will allow me to operate a microphone well since I cannot carry a tune. On the other hand, you, with a microphone and recording/playback devices, can entertain the whole globe with your wonderful voice. That allows you huge earnings while I languish as a waiter in a Hollywood restaurant facing ever-increasing rents for my modest apartment.
That is my way of beginning a dialogue regarding the very difficult public policy questions concerning the economics of education. Next comes the fact that there are neighborhoods in the United States that had dismally low rates of college attendance in 1960 and still have the same outcomes today in 2019. This is the equivalent of unused oil fields – vast numbers of capable humans left underutilized. We should be identifying the ten percent of census tracts that are performing weakest by this measure, and take as a national goal a substantial improvement in college attainment in those locations over the next decade. That would give our GDP numbers a big boost, don’t you think? We can do this.
Q: In reading Laurence Kotlikoff's campaign blog, he charges the media with not doing their jobs and it seems he felt your ticket would have gained more attention if he had been a billionaire. It is pretty unfortunate that two esteemed economists were so overlooked by the press. Why do you think this happened?
I do not blame the media. It takes more than knowledge and good ideas to get elected to office, and it seems a near certainty that even with a lot of press coverage we would not have been elected. Moreover, there are countless “experts” with what they think to be good and innovative ideas too, and which should the media choose? And why should that be the job of the media?
Actually, I never had high hopes of getting elected Vice President, but I did hope to improve the political conversation. The media might have woven our ideas into their conversations with the viable candidates but that did not happen either. Since then, the political conversation has deteriorated dramatically. The media is making it worse not better. For example, contrast the CNN town halls with the CNN talking heads. The town halls are informative and inspirational while the talking heads offer mostly politicized gossip. I confess I look forward to a daily dose of gossip from Anderson 360 and Chris Cuomo on CNN, but I wonder if that makes me a better citizen. Probably not. Of course, the Trump Presidency is what has made me desperate for another dose of Anderson 360 but I can imagine a world in which the media does not respond to my inappropriate need for daily gossip and gives us news the way Walter Cronkite did years ago.
Q: I see you were on the ballot in Colorado and Louisiana, and were registered write-in candidates in at least 35 states. That represents a lot of serious work. Can you explain to us the difference between a spur of the moment write-in vote and a registered write-in vote and why that is important?
In California, the greatest number of write-in ballots are often cast for “Mickey Mouse” but those votes do not count because Mickey is not a “registered” write-in candidate. In California, to be registered write-in candidates, we needed to get signatures of 55 registered voters to serve as electors. I had a party at my house, and people from the neighborhood, from UCLA and from USC volunteered to be electors. That was definitely an enjoyable event for me.
Q: From I can ascertain your ticket received 3,596 popular votes. Did you notice any patterns in where the votes came from, regionally or otherwise?
I was not moved by that small number of votes to think much about what they all meant. I guess that Larry and I have 3,596 admirers out there.
Q: What did you find the most disappointing about the campaign, and what did you find the most delightfully surprising?
I am inclined to think that a political campaign should be a time to educate the voters about the critical issues facing our country. It ought to be a time when we think collectively about what kind of country we want to be living in a couple of decades from now, and what policy choices are likely to make that happen.
But “the” Presidential campaign in 2016 focused on the choice between two personalities, and all the important issues were relegated to subsidiary considerations. The choice was to vote against either Hilary’s pantsuit or Trump’s tie. That was a disappointment.
I had low expectations about “our” campaign. I wasn’t surprised but I did enjoy my interactions with Larry Kotlikoff and with the voters that we met.
Q: Who do you favor for President in 2020?
I am pretty sure that we are experiencing the end of the era of Democratic Capitalism which worked well in the industrial age but is failing badly in the post-industrial age when wealth is created not in manufacturing but in the intellectual services. Contrast Detroit in 1965 with San Francisco in 2019, the first with broad prosperity and the second with enormous prosperity for the very few.
I do not think that the Trumpian oligarchy that has recently emerged in support of huge inequality is compatible with our democracy, and the Democrats are poised to take over again soon, but I also do not think that a back-and-forth contest between oligarchy and forced “socialism” is a good choice either. What we need is the emergence of a new value system that emphasizes how much we each have contributed to our communities, not how much we take away in the form of luxurious homes and cars and clothes. When a CEO is paid 400 times more than the median worker in a firm, he or she should welcome the chance to give away 3/4ths of that at least, and be proud of it. It will not mean the same if we accomplish this with taxation, and it will not feel the same. The CEO’s are going to fight this “theft.” We want them to compete to be the one to make the greatest contributions to American society. We want the winner proudly to proclaim “I gave away 95% of my income so that needy and deserving Americans can have happier and more productive lives!”
That’s my way of saying I am desperate to get Trump out of the White House. But I am not so sure which Democrat can most effectively address the very serious issues that I think we face. I am listening, and adjusting my preferences daily.
Q: Any epiphanies on being a Vice-Presidential candidate? Would you do it again and what advice do you have for others in that role?
I really do admire Larry Kotlikoff intellectually and personally, and if he asked me to do it again, I would say yes. Otherwise once is enough, and the sneers that some of my UCLA colleagues sent my way do not need to be reinvigorated.
Q: Thank you very much Dr. Leamer for participating in this project.
