Looks like I'll be here on Tuesday morning, taking part in a panel that will be listening to policy proposals from 11th grade economics students on what to do with Social Security. The idea is to talk with them about the issues at hand and give them feedback on proposals that they've been developing and preparing to present.
I have a feeling this will be fun and informative for me and the students, and it will manage to make me feel like I wasted a lot of time in high school :)
Congrats, Daniel. Remember: Ponzi scheme.
ReplyDeleteExtra credit for proposing to do nothing. ;)
ReplyDeleteThat sounds wonderful! How did you get involved?
ReplyDeleteDr J -
ReplyDeleteJust an email through the department asking for student of faculty volunteers. I'm so bad at volunteering for community stuff when things get busy and this seemed easy to accommodate and interesting. I've always been interested in these schools too - heard a lot of good things about them.
David and Min -
I'm personally very curious to see what they are going to propose. I don't know how "balanced" the instruction is at the school given its namesake. I don't think I will personally volunteer "Ponzi scheme" in the discussion, but if it doesn't come up I'll definitely ask their thoughts things like privatization. I'm thinking back to the work I did at UI with Bob Reischauer this weekend and making a mental list of prominent policy questions around it to bring up if they don't mention them themselves.
Debating whether to wade into chained CPI or not... :)
Given the assignment, I think it would take an extremely gutsy student to propose doing nothing. That is asking for a bad mark. (Even if the proposals are not graded.) After all, nothing is perfect, and surely you can find some improvement. At that age I would not have appreciated the prevalence of error.
DeleteDon't forget to mention Larry White's social security privatization plan!
ReplyDeletehttp://divisionoflabour.com/archives/000625.php
I would say don't forget CBO Policy Option # 2 August 2010 which is to raise payroll taxes by 1/2 of 1/10th of 1% each year that the 10 year actuarial projection shows a shortfall which for someone making $40K per year would split 80 cents per weekly paycheck between the employer/employee. If wages rise at the 1.2% average wages should go up $8 per week. If either of our political parties allowed an honest debate and gave workers the choice of this option or cutting benefits or raising the retirement age it would be the hands down winner. This could also be combined with some aspect of raising the CAP to capture the 90% of wages or some combination of several other of the options and problem is solved. Another one for the deficit hawks which is probably not politically feasible is an immediate 2% increase in SS FICA taxes and cancel the trust fund bonds thereby reducing the deficit about $3 Trillion.
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