Econ 202: Macroeconomic Analysis
Fall 2011
Prof. Olney
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Discussion #1 Assignment and Questions
On Thursday evening, President Obama will present a speech before a joint session of Congress. It’s widely billed as his “jobs” speech. Listen to the speech live, or find it on the internet, or read the transcript on the New York Times website (subscription required after first 20 peeks per month) or at the Whitehouse.gov website. (One way or another, that is, find out what he says.) And then based on what you know and on what is in the speech, think about these questions that will form the basis for our September 9 discussion:
1. There are two major issues facing the U.S. economy: jobs and the deficit & debt. What is the “jobs” issue? What is the “deficit & debt” issue? Are these short-run or long-run concerns (or both!)? Where would you find data to characterize the “jobs” issue? Where would you find data to characterize the “deficit & debt” issue? Be sure you know the definitions to terms that you’re using.
2. Make a list of the proposals in President Obama’s speech. For each, what would be its effect on jobs? On deficit & debt? An easy way to do this would be to make a table with the proposal in column 1, the effect on jobs in column 2, and the effect on deficit & debt in column 3. If the President makes a long laundry-list of proposals, stop your list once you get to 10 proposals.
3. Ignoring politics – that is, don’t think about the likelihood of something passing Congress – rank order the proposals you’ve listed, from “I think this is the most important proposal to implement” to “I think this is the least important.” The bottom of your list may even be “I think this proposal should not be implemented.” For each item on your list, offer a brief economic justification for your ranking. Be sure to think about both short-run and long-run effects of the proposals.
(Note: the questions are written before the speech is delivered. We’ll see how well I predicted what he might say!)