Bernie Sanders has cited economist Gerald Friedman in claiming that his plans make financial sense. To quote Friedman himself, that’s an “ideal case … a rosy scenario.” As an academic thought experiment, Bernie’s plans could make for interesting pondering. But throw in “political and policy-related complications” (a.k.a. the real world), and the plans fall apart. All those other economists were right: it turns out Bernie’s “plans” aren’t really plans at all.
Economist who produced overly favorable analysis of the Sanders economic plan: “This is an ideal case. […] It’s a little bit of a rosy scenario.” “The Sanders program would, of course, face political obstacles to enactment. Other considerations are the influence of the Federal Reserve and the economies of other nations. ‘This is an ideal case,’ Mr. Friedman said. ‘In the social sciences, you try to construct an ideal case: If we did it all the way we want, how will it look? Then you chip away at it. ‘It’s a little bit of a rosy scenario for the early years because we’re coming out of a recession. We’ve had very slow growth for 35, 40 years and people have gotten used to it. A couple of academics were quoted as saying I’m overly optimistic. I think they’re overly pessimistic because they’ve gotten used to slow growth.’” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2/14/16]
and earlier:
Economist who did analysis of Bernie Sanders’s health care plan for the campaign admitted that his analysis did not deal with details or real-world implementation. “When the Sanders campaign released its plan and the accompanying analysis, [economist Gerald] Friedman was candid about the limits of his projection, particularly when it came to grappling with political and policy-related complications. ‘The pleasure of being an academic is I can just spell things out and leave the details to others,’ Friedman told reporters at the time. ‘The details very quickly get very messy.’” [Huffington Post, 1/27/16]