Facing The Future: The Nexus of Trust in Government, Fiscal Policy, and Economics

This week on Facing the Future, we hear from labor economist Betsy Stevenson, who is a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who served on the Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama. In a recent piece for the Peter G. Peterson foundation, Stevenson looks at some social science research showing that we are in an unusual time when public trust in government is at some of the lowest levels ever recorded. Stevenson recommends several steps Congress could take to stabilize our economy, end the dangerous game of chicken with the federal debt limit holding our financial system hostage, and enact some meaningful tax reforms to allow us to more fully fund Social Security and Medicare.