My oldest son has big plans to switch my toothbrush with my husband’s today, so we’ll see how that works out. Hijinks, people, big time.
But nothing compared to the surreal experience of watching policymakers make economic policy based, apparently, on fairly little understanding of actual economic realities.
If you haven’t seen them already, take a look at the Economic Policy Institute’s ‘top charts’ for 2012. These are the sets of economic information that, in a perfect world, would be driving U.S. policy decisions about social spending, infrastructure, entitlements, and, of course, tax policy. Of course, I think life would be better if the good folks at EPI got to run a lot more of our social policy.
Here are some of my favorites:
What are we going to do to get these lost generations reengaged in the labor market? What does this mean for my graduating students? For the concept of ‘retirement’ in the years to come?
Seriously. We make way less than $250,000 per year, and I still feel super economically privileged. I know my kids will be able to go to college. We own a home. I can buy something ridiculous at Target without flinching, for crying out loud. Economic security for the real middle class, and let’s be real about who we’re talking about.
A social problem we don’t define as ‘problematic’. There is such a thing as ‘too much’, not just ‘too little’. Both extremes matter. A lot.
Cuts in government spending aren’t victimless. More efficiency doesn’t necessarily yield a stronger economy.
It’s going to take a long time to claw back from this kind of devastation. And, the subtitle: those who started with less end up with…way less.
And here’s the not foolish part: we need to advocate to shift the policy conversation so that these are the figures that are animating the debate. We need economic policies that don’t make us slap our foreheads.
We need to not feel like April fools.
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Classroom to Capitol 
The charts that are shaping U.S. economic policy. April Fool.
My oldest son has big plans to switch my toothbrush with my husband’s today, so we’ll see how that works out. Hijinks, people, big time.
But nothing compared to the surreal experience of watching policymakers make economic policy based, apparently, on fairly little understanding of actual economic realities.
If you haven’t seen them already, take a look at the Economic Policy Institute’s ‘top charts’ for 2012. These are the sets of economic information that, in a perfect world, would be driving U.S. policy decisions about social spending, infrastructure, entitlements, and, of course, tax policy. Of course, I think life would be better if the good folks at EPI got to run a lot more of our social policy.
Here are some of my favorites:
What are we going to do to get these lost generations reengaged in the labor market? What does this mean for my graduating students? For the concept of ‘retirement’ in the years to come?
Seriously. We make way less than $250,000 per year, and I still feel super economically privileged. I know my kids will be able to go to college. We own a home. I can buy something ridiculous at Target without flinching, for crying out loud. Economic security for the real middle class, and let’s be real about who we’re talking about.
A social problem we don’t define as ‘problematic’. There is such a thing as ‘too much’, not just ‘too little’. Both extremes matter. A lot.
Cuts in government spending aren’t victimless. More efficiency doesn’t necessarily yield a stronger economy.
It’s going to take a long time to claw back from this kind of devastation. And, the subtitle: those who started with less end up with…way less.
And here’s the not foolish part: we need to advocate to shift the policy conversation so that these are the figures that are animating the debate. We need economic policies that don’t make us slap our foreheads.
We need to not feel like April fools.
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