Talk in Wilton CT, 4/19/12

1. What’s Up, What’s Down and Why,
at the End of the Day, We’re In This
Together
Jared Bernstein
4/19/12
bernstein@cbpp.org

2. Source: Inclusive Fitness in Evolution, Ferriere and Michod, 2011.

3. But How Does This Map Onto
Economic and Social Policy?
• Growing together, growing apart
• What is the role of gov’t?
• Great recession and its aftermath (what’s
up/down?)
• Fiscal policy: debt and deficits don’t have to
be as scary as they are.
• Can we get from here to there given today’s
politics (and politicians)?

4. Fellow Nutmeggers!
• I bring a message of hope!
• Yes, things are more than a little screwed
up, but…
• Solutions to our biggest problems are either
known or we have good hypotheses.
(inadequate employment growth, health care
costs, revenues, inequality, political dysfunction)
• We just need to transfer from vicious to virtuous
cycle.

7. Current Recovery
• Slow improvement
• Why haven’t we hit “escape velocity?”
-- “corrections” not yet behind us and some new
stuff in front.
• Looming fiscal cliff!
• Forecasts
• But—a lot of what we did actually worked!

8. CT

9. Germans over the past three years have paid an average of $2.64 a gallon (excluding
taxes), while Americans paid $2.69, even though the U.S. produced 5.4 million barrels of
oil per day while Germany produced just 28,000.
--WSJ.com 9

11. 11

12. 12

14. So, What’s the Best Way Forward?
• Near-term: avoid fiscal cliff dive
• Clear-eyed look at what’s coming and how
that relates to role of gov’t
(demographics, climate, innovation, global
connectedness)
• Preserve the gov’t we need (House budget
most pointedly does NOT do this)
• Restore spirit of compromise (new
politicians?)
• Fairness, common sense, YOYOs vs WITTs 14

15. The $3.3 trillion includes the following four categories of cuts:
--$2.4 trillion in reductions from Medicaid and other health care for people
with low or moderate incomes.
--$134 billion in cuts to SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program.
--At least $463 billion in cuts in mandatory programs serving low-income
Americans (other than Medicaid and SNAP).
--At least $291 billion in cuts in low-income discretionary programs.
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