MURFREESBORO — A
Boston University economist will give a free public lecture Thursday (Nov. 5)
at MTSU that focuses on the realities of the nation’s severe debt load.
Economics
professor Laurence Kotlikoff will give a talk entitled, “What None of the
Candidates Will Tell You ... Our Country is Broke!” The lecture will take
place at 7 p.m. Thursday in the State Farm Lecture Hall located in Room S102 of
the Business and Aerospace Building. A searchable campus parking map is
available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParking2015-16.
“As the
2016 presidential campaigns heat up, the positions of candidates on government
debt and spending have become paramount to a large number of voters,” said
Jason DeBacker, assistant professor in the Department of Economics and
Finance. “However, the general public's understanding of the causes and
consequences of government debt is limited.”
In a
spring appearance before a U.S. Senate budget committee, Kotlikoff told
lawmakers: “Our nation’s broke, and it’s not broke in 75 years or 50 years or
25 years or 10 years. It’s broke today. … Indeed, it may well be in worse
fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece.”
Kotlikoff,
co-author of “Get What’s Yours: The
Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security,” estimates that the nation’s
“fiscal gap” — the present value of all projected future expenditures less the
present value of all projected future taxes — is roughly $210 trillion.
His
lecture is a part of the Economics Guest Speaker Series and is sponsored by the
Economics Club, the Department of Economics and Finance in the Jones College of
Business and the Honors College. Free and open to the public, these events are
designed to provide presentations of economic ideas that are accessible to all
audiences, organizers say.
“These
issues … are especially important to
college-age individuals who will be disproportionately affected by our
government's debt,” DeBacker said.
For
information, contact DeBacker at Jason.DeBacker@mtsu.edu.
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