Three economics professors with thin glasses and calm demeanorsattempted to clarify complex economic issues Thursday night in theUnion.
In a presidential debate sponsored by the Students In FreeEnterprise and the Economics Club, University professors RichardStahl, Robert Newman and Douglas Schwalm selected several hotbutton issues in the presidential election and clarified them forthe audience.
The panel discussed employment, social security, taxes andoutsourcing.
During the discussion, audience participation spurred talk abouttaxes, federal deficits and minimum wage.
After the program, Newman said the debate, which also includedquestions and remarks from the crowd, was a useful way to clarifyissues that often are confused in the media.
In the discussion, Newman explained that the media often onlycover unemployment rates from one survey. He said there are twosurveys that take statistics and present different outcomes.
He said the media coverage looks at one survey that saysunemployment is high.
“One is rosy and one is bleak,” Newman said.
The panel also presented another side to what often is perceivedabout outsourcing.
Stahl implied that CNN political analyst Lou Dobbs portraysoutsourcing to be a negative thing. But he said the American publicneeds to take a closer look.
He said data shows only 2.3 percent of the entire labor forcehas been outsourced.
“This doesn’t have that big of an effect,” he said.
Stahl also said he has been hearing a lot about informationtechnology jobs being outsourced, but he pointed out evidence thatshows 414,000 jobs have been outsourced, while 219,000 jobs havebeen insourced.
“That’s one-tenth of a percent outsourced,” he said.
Schwalm also explained the burden of social security.
He said neither President George W. Bush or Sen. John Kerrychose to talk about Social Security because none of the ways to fixit are “politically attractive.”
Schwalm said Social Security is the second biggest problem inthe country, but nobody talks about it.
“One day they’ll have to,” he said. “Every once and a while,Congress and the president get together and they do somethingcorrect,” he said with a grin.