Greg Mankiw runs on support for free trade, opposition to farm subsidies, an energy tax, raising the retirement age, and other proposals. I think he is correct that this platform would win a lot of votes with Ph.D economists. It would probably do horribly with the public at large. Cue Bryan Caplan, even though my guess is that he would not be such a fan of the energy tax.

One quibble I have is that I think that the biggest policy issue is what to do about Medicare. My guess is that raising the age of eligibility for Medicare is not quite the same consensus solution that raising the Social Security retirement age would be (and Tyler has some doubts about the consensus for the latter).

In fact, I am the only economist I know who consistently pushes for raising the age of eligibility for Medicare. I think that the economics profession would be more anxious to reform Medicare than the general public, but the profession might be too divided over the approach to reform for anything like a consensus to exist.