economy at large is doubtless significant. Promotion of economic growth In an open letter to the President, the Congress, and the American people, eighty economists, including Nobel Laureate Vernon L. Smith, stated that the FairTax would boost the United States economy. A study in 2007 by the Beacon Hill Institute of Suffolk University stated that within five years real GDP would increase 10.7% over the current system, domestic investment by 86.3%, capital stock by 9.3%, employment by 9.9%, real wages by 10.2%, and consumption by 1.8%. Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University finds that the shift to the FairTax would raise marginal labor productivity and real wages over the course of the century by 18.9% and long-run output by 10.6%. Further, studies of the FairTax at Boston University and Rice University suggests the FairTax will bring long-term interest rates down by as much as one third. As falling tax compliance costs lower production costs, exports would increase by 26% initially and remain more than 13% above present levels. According to Professor Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University’s Economics Department, revenues to Social Security and Medicare would double as the size of the economy doubles within 15 years after passage of the FairTax. Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto states the FairTax is unsuited to take advantage of supply-side effects and would create a powerful disincentive to spend money. A Nathan Associates study commissioned by the National Retail Federation in 2000 that found a national sales tax bill filed by Billy Tauzin (Individual Tax Freedom Act) would bring a 3 year decline in the economy, a 4 year decline in employment and an 8 year decline in consumer spending. Proponents point out that the FairTax has different features than the Tauzin bill and that the study done by the NRF makes many adverse assumptions and does not take into account the removal of embedded tax costs or the inventory credit that refunds 23% of the cost of held inventory. The study, which represents supporters' worst-case scenario for a consumption tax, predicts that the economy will grow only 3% more in ten years than it would have under the income tax and that the increase in consumption will be 1.15% less in the first year relative to what it would have been under the income tax. The study concludes that consumption will be higher in the fourth year and every year thereafter than it