Super Tuesday’s primary contests are receding rapidly in the rear-view mirror and November’s presidential contest is starting to take shape. Now maybe – just maybe – the candidates will start taking on real issues and not just each other.



Tomorrow morning, the remaining hopefuls will get the chance – if they choose to take it – to address something substantial: what they would do about the economy, if they were elected. It’s the first Friday of the month, and the Department of Labor will release another set of monthly jobs data. This time around, economists are predicting that employers created 175,000 new jobs during February.

Why is this important enough for Trump, Clinton or Sanders to interrupt their usual rhetoric, and switch gears? Because the economy matters, and jobs matter. And even if the headline numbers look great, the day-to-day reality for many Americans is anything but. Wage growth is anemic. College students graduate, burdened with debt and unable to find jobs, while their parents face layoffs or pressure to accept salary cuts or give back pensions or other benefits.

It’s that stark contrast between the political leaders that characterized the post-2008 recovery, and the way many Americans have experienced it in their daily lives that has fueled the anger that has made Trump’s campaign so successful, and made Bernie Sanders such a threat to Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency. Many Americans are mad as hell about the economic state of affairs, and they’re not going to take it any longer.

“If everything is as great as the economists tell us, then why are so many voters flocking to the relatively extremist candidates who seem to be tapping into feelings that conditions aren’t that great?” wonders Mike Bazdarich, an economist at Western Asset Management in Pasadena, California.

He sees “plenty of reasons” to be skeptical of the jobs data, noting that a large bloc of Americans simply have given up on looking for work altogether. That means the unemployment rate could well be artificially low, and it makes the question of how to stimulate economic growth – and create those much-needed jobs – all the more crucial.

Except that the election campaign, so far, hasn’t thrown up much in the way of substantive debate on just how to create growth.

It isn’t that the candidates haven’t put forward policy proposals. It’s just that it’s hard to take many of them seriously – in particular, some of the growth targets that they put forth.

Let’s look at Donald Trump. His tax plan – which includes big tax cuts and a simplified structure – would cost somewhere between $9.5trn and $12trn over 10 years. Reducing taxes would “bring jobs back”, he told MSNBC. That’s entirely possible, but the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has calculated that to pay for his tax plan, Trump would somehow have to ensure that the economy grows by 7%. That’s even more than he has publicly stated he believes he can deliver, the organization notes: they quote him as saying “we think [growth] could be 5 or even 6 [%]. We are going to have growth that will be tremendous.”

That’s trademark Trump, of course: everything is always bigger and better and bolder and brighter. It’s also far, far out of line with history and every forecast: the Congressional Budget Office is expecting growth to average only 2.1% a year over the next decade, and since 1947, it has averaged only 3.2%.

To be sure, Trump is hardly the only die-hard optimist out there. Ted Cruz is absolutely certain that “America can get to 5% growth”. Sanders’ campaign staff thinks it’s reasonable to predict real GDP growth rates jumping from 2.1% to 5.3%, even after spending more to offer free healthcare and free college and provide higher wages and more generous entitlement programs. Campaign staff and supporters have argued that those who disagree have “picked sides with Hillary Clinton”. Clinton’s own list of recommendations is similarly packed with promises, but there’s no sign of a specific GDP growth target.

The problem is that the candidates are focusing their attention on the micro level: on making promises to voters. Trump will build a wall and keep out immigrants that might compete for their jobs, while ensuring that veterans get health care “immediately”. Sanders will ensure that they get free college educations and universal health care. Clinton wants to raise the minimum wage and implement the “Buffett rule” as part of a reform of the tax code, so that millionaires always pay higher tax rates than their secretaries. Some of the tax cuts being proposed aren’t even within the bounds of sanity, much less plausibility.

And still no one is talking about the elephant in the room: how to foster growth. It is as if this happens by magic, when the president is busy doing other stuff, like building walls, boosting military spending or redressing income inequality.

It just doesn’t work that way.

It’s going to be hard to encourage economic growth if we close ourselves off from the world with trade barriers and other “aliens not wanted” signs. It also will be tricky to convince companies that it will be safe for them to invest for the long haul – ie to create jobs – if a presidential candidate begins treating them as public enemy number one.

Finding a way to overhaul the tax system so that it’s fair and more simple is key. It should involve streamlining the corporate tax code, so that any corporation that wishes to repatriate income – and not all will, since multinationals can use their capital in plenty of other places worldwide – won’t face disincentives to doing so.

What role might infrastructure investments play in this (other than Trump’s infamous wall, that is)? True, we haven’t successfully mobilized the workforce and directed it to national infrastructure projects of this kind for more than half a century, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be done again. And heaven knows, our bridges, highways and port facilities are in need of an overhaul.

There’s no shortage of serious issues to discuss, once we get past the rhetoric of how immigrants steal jobs and how the system is rigged.

A good starting point would be to look at Friday’s jobless numbers with an honest and critical eye. I’d love to hear any remaining presidential candidates provide their own analysis of the data, and critique the methodology used to measure both job creation and unemployment figures. How would each set about reforming the twin tasks of figuring out how large the problem is today, and what specific policies – beyond just blanket solutions like “more military spending” or a $15/hour wage – will fix it?

Because this kind of serious discussion of serious issues already is long overdue in this campaign.