Mehmet Oz is not an economist, but he occasionally plays one on TV. Speaking last week at a televised forum on mental health, the medical doctor and administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed an idea for how to boost the US economy: Americans should just work longer. Adding a year of work would generate $3 trillion, he said, enough to “remove the [national] debt.”
Oz was careful not to suggest raising Social Security’s full retirement age, a longtime Republican policy now verboten in the populist era of the party. Mitt Romney favored raising it to 68 ...