April 23, 2024 • 62 mins
Experience a powerful exploration of economic resilience and hope within the college journey, as I, Dr. Katherine Ross, join forces with Professor Susan Doty. Together, we dissect the contemporary economic landscape faced by students, from inflation woes to job market competitiveness. We offer a dual perspective that acknowledges the challenges, yet shines a light on the opportunities that higher education still promises in today’s world. Our mission is not just to dissect the issues but to empower you with the insights to navigate them confidently.
In a time when the economic decisions of policymakers can feel like a distant force, we delve into the profound effect they have on young lives and their empowerment. Our conversation goes beyond textbook theories, tapping into the psychological and experiential facets of students' lives. We share compelling narratives that weave historical context with the current sentiments, providing a robust understanding of the economic dance of past and present. It's a discussion rich in empathy, filled with personal anecdotes, and aimed at fostering a greater understanding of the world's macroeconomic heartbeat.
The final act of our dialogue focuses on the personal agency that can transform uncertainty into a wellspring of hope. Hear about the pivotal skills and values nurtured during the college years that can serve as your compass in uncertain economic climates. Discover how embracing personal development, critical thinking, and financial management can lay the groundwork for a future of joy, purpose, and resilience. This is not just a conversation about economics; it's a guide to finding hope amidst the tides of change.
In a time when the economic decisions of policymakers can feel like a distant force, we delve into the profound effect they have on young lives and their empowerment. Our conversation goes beyond textbook theories, tapping into the psychological and experiential facets of students' lives. We share compelling narratives that weave historical context with the current sentiments, providing a robust understanding of the economic dance of past and present. It's a discussion rich in empathy, filled with personal anecdotes, and aimed at fostering a greater understanding of the world's macroeconomic heartbeat.
The final act of our dialogue focuses on the personal agency that can transform uncertainty into a wellspring of hope. Hear about the pivotal skills and values nurtured during the college years that can serve as your compass in uncertain economic climates. Discover how embracing personal development, critical thinking, and financial management can lay the groundwork for a future of joy, purpose, and resilience. This is not just a conversation about economics; it's a guide to finding hope amidst the tides of change.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Stay tuned to the Ask Dr Ross podcast.
It's created to give you infoto succeed at college.
Our hosts are highly qualified.
Dr Catherine Ross is a memberof the University of Texas
System's Academy ofDistinguished Teachers.
She's also a popular professorof 19th century English
literature.
Co-host and multimedia editorNathan Wood provides a student
(00:27):
perspective.
Ask Dr Ross is a communityservice of the University of
Texas at Tyler.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hi, I'm Katherine Ross and this is a podcast for
parents, students in school whoare thinking about going to
college, college students whoparents students in school who
are thinking about going tocollege, college students who
are already here, adults who arethinking of maybe going back to
college and really anyone whowants to know more about what
life in colleges anduniversities is like today in
the US of A.
I'm here with my friend, nathanWitt, who's a student here.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
If you'd like to ask Dr Ross a question, you can
email us at adrquestions atgmailcom.
Today we're going to talk moreabout hope, so we've got a mini
series covering the question howam I, as a college student,
supposed to have hope for thefuture?
And so we're going to dive alittle deeper into that,
(01:19):
specifically talking about thefinances, the state of the
economy and what are we walkinginto.
What have we been handed asthis new generation walking into
the working class?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, and part of the reason why we've got this
series going is that Nathan andI've talked a lot about how it
just seems like everything'sreally gone wrong in the last
couple of years ever since COVIDand people are talking about so
many bad things measures of thepolitics, of the economy, of
the job situation and so on.
So doom and gloom.
And whereas people like me cansee it from a little bit larger,
(01:54):
longer view, it's harder foryoung folks to think about it.
I'm introducing a colleague andfriend of mine, Professor Susan
Doty, who is a distinguishedteaching professor at University
of Texas, at Tyler, in theCollege of Arts and Sciences,
specifically in the socialsciences department.
That's correct.
She is also a distinguishedsenior lecturer, the executive
(02:17):
director of the Center forEconomic Education and Financial
Literacy at the university here, and she's the past president
of the National Association ofEconomic Educators.
So she comes to us with allsorts of hats still on her head
and kind of in her back pocket,and I think she's got a lot to
tell us Great.
Having said all that, Susan, doyou want to start talking to
(02:39):
Nathan about economic hope?
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Oh, economic hope.
First of all, thank you so muchfor inviting me.
This is a wonderful opportunityto talk to you.
Before we started today, wewere saying what an exciting
time of the year it is.
The first week of the new fallsemester especially is just so
full of energy and, I think,hope.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I think so too.
Yeah, I would definitely.
I use the word excitement whenwe're talking.
It's, there's a, there's anlike, An energy, yeah, an energy
.
It's like the air is vibratinga little bit, which is cool.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
And so folks who listen to this may not realize,
but we are recording this thefirst week of classes in the
fall 2023 semester.
Yeah, where are we going fromhere?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Professor Doty, I think we can start really broad
and then let's start chippingaway at it.
Young people I guess I shouldspecify first and say that I'm
kind of playing devil's advocatehere.
Right, I am representing thehopeless youth right now, and so
let me ask you this questionAre they all hopeless?
I don't know if they're allhopeless, but I think that
(03:47):
there's certainly a demographicout there that's pretty large
and holds a big representationin my generation.
So it looks like everything isstacked against us.
It looks like systematicdecisions were made to put us at
a disadvantage the incomingworking class.
(04:09):
Is that a misconception?
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Oh, I certainly think that it is, and I think it's
important to acknowledge thatyou are representing people who
feel that way and those feelingsare important.
But one of the things thathappens at university is that we
look at the data okay and welook at primary sources, and we
(04:37):
learn to distinguish betweenrumor and fact.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Right, what you see on a headline on some kind of
site or blog or website and whatthe research articles are
finding.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, Absolutely Sure .
So let me ask you first of all,what is the bad news that
you're talking?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
about To start with a hot-but button topic, I think
the.
What was the?
I'm trying to think of a short,easy term for it, I guess.
To start, I'll say the minimumwage compared to the rise of
inflation and how those two havenot grown as a pair.
(05:25):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
So that's certainly valid, but let's think about
what minimum wage is for.
Are you in college because andsacrificing your time and
investing in yourself so thatyou can earn minimum wage?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
No, but that could rabbit hole into a place of the
college diploma has less weightthan it did before, because even
I personally know a lot ofpeers who have gotten out of
college with that diploma andonly been able to find a minimum
(06:03):
wage job.
But we won't go there yet.
Yes, of course my intentionwith getting this diploma is
that it will platform me to geta better salary at the end of
the day.
That sounds cold, but of coursethat's definitely part of the
equation.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I want to add here I don't think it is cold.
I think all of us have torecognize that one of the main
reasons everybody goes tocollege is to make a good life.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And that includes finding a really interesting
career that you're good at andwhere you get paid pretty well.
So there's no shame in sayingthat.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I like that you say that here.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Yeah, okay, that we have seen over the past, you
know, maybe five, six decades achange in college graduation
rates from about 7% to about 37%.
Okay, so there's something thatis encouraging people to seek
higher education.
Sure, we have on my tagline,you know, on my university email
(07:04):
.
We have on my tagline, you know, on my university email.
My tagline is education is theultimate economic multiplier,
and I believe that, okay, andthat's more than money, that's
more, it's quality of life.
Sure, okay, and so there's alot of measures of quality of
(07:30):
life that show improvement overtime and again.
It's hard for someone who is notfeeling the love to show those
sorts of statistics, but one ofthe things is, you know, people
talk a lot about now isinflation, but our inflation
rate now is about 4%.
A year or two ago when it wasso very high, it was 8%, but it
wasn't very long ago, you know,decades ago, where it was double
(07:54):
digit inflation.
So we like to see it a littlebit lower than the 4% that it is
now.
You know, 2% would be better,but this is not a high inflation
rate and it's not an unexpectedinflation rate, given what
happened, you know, just threeyears ago during.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
COVID.
So one of the things I wouldlike to insert here, then, is
that there's a piece ofknowledge, of understanding
about the way the history, therecent history of our economic
situation has been going along,so that it puts that number,
which seems real scary, intoperspective within the last two
(08:37):
years, even right.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Absolutely, and if we think about what were you doing
in 20?
In 2020?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
2020.
Like before the pandemichappened.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Where were you in your life in 2020?
You were in high school orcollege.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
I was in college.
Yeah, I was living on campus ata college in Dallas.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Okay, all right.
In 2020, after COVID hit we didsome incredible things in terms
of pumping money into theeconomy.
We did it with aid to families,we did it with aid to
(09:19):
businesses, and we did it.
That's fiscal policy.
Fiscal policy is governmentpolicy, it's taxing and spending
decisions.
But we also did it withmonetary policy, federal reserve
policy, where interest rateswere lowered so that people and
businesses had access to fundsat low to almost zero interest
(09:47):
rates.
There was a cost to doing that.
We chose to do it.
We as a nation chose to do itbecause there was an emergency
that we responded to.
But the cost of that waspumping so much money into the
economy.
(10:07):
That increases demand.
What does an increase in demanddo?
It raises prices.
Okay, so that inflation thatwe've seen since was not
unexpected.
It was the cost We've talkedabout this before.
It was the opportunity cost ofthe decisions we made to help a
(10:29):
nation in crisis.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So it was not unexpected by the educated and I
think that's going to be one ofa few main headlines that we're
going to circle around a lotfor this conversation is how
important economic education isto feeling hope Be still my
heart.
But really, because I thinkthat's again why a lot of my
(10:54):
generation and young people ingeneral felt upset because the
people making these decisionsright.
When you say we decided to doto take this opportunity, you
didn't decide, I didn't decide,that you know and I.
Now we can discuss, we canrabbit hole and discuss who's to
(11:15):
blame for this reason, but Idon't think it's worth it.
For whatever reason.
I think in mass, my generationwas not informed that these
decisions were being made andcertainly you were in high
school?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You probably wasn't.
It wasn't on your radar Right.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
And didn't feel like we had any influence over these
decisions being made.
And yet we feel like we arefeeling the most the heaviest of
the brute force from that, youknow, opportunity cost.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
But let me remind you one thing Weren't college debt,
wasn't college debt held for along time?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It was.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
So that there were some college students who
recognize it.
Now I know college debt isanother whole issue, but at
least they didn't.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, I was like do we want to go there?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Well, but I think that's an important piece of it.
It did impact the young peopleto hold off.
I've got a daughter-in-lawwho's still paying off some of
her law school loans, but itheld off for a couple years and
it really made a big difference.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
It did.
But this podcast is not forcollege students.
Our target audience for thispodcast is people coming into
college, so people who would nothave enjoyed those benefits.
The other thing is and this ismore of a, this is more Polly
Psy, but I'll just say, becausewe've had that conversation
already, it was a greatconversation.
Remind me his name, dr Bryant.
(12:39):
So we had that conversationwith Dr Bryant.
But there is definitely afeeling of the people who are
making these decisions, forthese cost opportunity decisions
, right, they are in a financialposition to not nearly feel the
(13:00):
sting of this side of thedecision.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
And a lot of you didn't vote for him either.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Right, exactly, we didn't vote for you.
It doesn't affect you nearly asmuch with the tax bracket
you're in and now I'm eating,you know, $5 ramen because you
thought it was worth it and Ididn't feel like I had any
choice in if I was willing totake on the brunt of that or not
(13:24):
.
But before we go into it, Ithink that we need to take a
step back and you need to tellus the Doty mantra, because, of
course, dr Ross and I know it,because we've had many
conversations about economicswith you, but our listeners
haven't heard it, and it's oneof my favorite things, so you
have to tell it.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
And we're going to have to revise this a little bit
.
Yeah, we'll toss some thingsaround, so that this will be at
the front and there may be somethings all of us have said we
don't want to say, but go ahead.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
So give the intro.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Okay.
So the Dodie mantra is this Ihave never taught a class or
conducted a workshop or given apresentation.
I don't believe withoutstarting with this, it's a
framing, economic way ofthinking, framing to start a
conversation Everything we valueis scarce.
Because everything we value isscarce, we can't have it all.
(14:16):
Because when we can't have itall, we have to make choices.
Every choice we make meansgiving up something else.
That most valued alternativethat we give up when we make a
choice is our opportunity cost,and that opportunity cost is the
real cost of the choices wemake.
(14:36):
Could you give an example?
Absolutely, you know.
We can apply this toindividuals and households
making decisions, or managersand business firms making
decisions, or to politicians andgovernment making decisions.
Every time we choose to dosomething, we are choosing not
(14:56):
to do something else.
That could be as simple as abusiness that is choosing.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Can we actually can we do a student choosing to go
to college?
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Abs, what a great one .
Okay, so we have, you know, ahigh school student who is
making one of the most importantdecisions of life, and it's not
just a financial decision.
But that student is saying if Igo to college, what am I giving
(15:35):
up to do?
It's not the cost, the pricetag of the education, the
education, it's the.
What else could I be doing?
Could I be an apprentice tobecome a plumber?
Could I go into the military?
(16:01):
Could I go work, you know, inthe oil fields?
What is the cost of educationin terms of what I would give up
to get it?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Another example I can live at home and save a lot of
money and have to drive an hourinto campus and miss out on a
lot of stuff that happens in thecollege life.
Or I can suck it up and pay alittle bit more money to live on
campus in the dorm and eat dormfood and be able to be in the
(16:27):
middle of things, where thingsare happening.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
So the way Dr Ross just added to that is reinforces
this idea of constantdecision-making and divergent
paths all along.
I'm talking with my hands,which your viewers will not be
able to see, but her hands aregoing wide.
She's making branches, and eachone of those decisions becomes a
(16:56):
choice and a refusal.
If you will, we can apply theeconomic way of decision making
to really any sort of choice wemake, again in households and
business firms and government,because individuals are always
making these choices.
So we, often people, tend tothink about good and bad choices
(17:21):
.
Sometimes we are making what webelieve is the better of bad
choices or the not quite asamazing of great choices.
Right, okay, and so you?
You grasped immediately theidea of opportunity cost and so
(17:45):
it's a weighing.
It's a weighing and adeliberate process of thinking
about what we're going to do.
Let's assume for a minute thatthe student who chooses
four-year college has made thatchoice deliberately, rationally.
(18:06):
Then we've got to believe thatstudent believes that the
benefits are greater than thecosts, or it wouldn't be
rational.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Great, so you've introduced the Doty mantra.
So now.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
By the way, I want you to send it to us in a
complete sentence so that we canpost it in quotation marks on
the website.
Yeah, we'll have that.
With the Dodi mantra.
The Dodi mantra.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Now we can circle back around to where I cut us
off.
So we're talking about thispolitical decision I guess you
would call this economicdecision made by our elected
officials, made by our electedofficials, and young people are
feeling maybe a littledisenfranchised, maybe a little
(18:55):
cut out of the loop, right,maybe a little bit of, you know,
same vein as taxation withoutrepresentation, kind of stuff
you know.
So how do you respond to thatperception that the young people
have?
What is your take on it?
Speaker 4 (19:10):
I think Dr Ross would agree with me.
You know, we don't tellstudents, we show students and
we create opportunities forstudents to aha.
You know, come to aha momentson their own by doing, and you
know, part of the way I woulddeal with this question in a
(19:34):
class, for example, is I wouldpresent economic problems and
have students work in teams tofigure out how to solve them.
So here you know, let's go backto COVID for just a minute,
because things happened at thattime that were so dramatic.
(19:54):
And so if we say, you know, thescenario that students are
going to work on is we havefamilies who cannot pay their
bills, Okay, what are we goingto do?
That's the problem.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
So let the banks foreclose on their homes, let
their credit scores be ruined,affecting them for years to come
.
Let them perhaps be evicted bylandlords.
Let children not have food.
(20:30):
Okay, you know I'm giving ahorrible case scenario, but I'm
doing it for a reason.
And if we have the means tomake that situation better by oh
dear, it's over our budget.
More deficit spending.
So the government borrows toget stimulus payments out.
(20:55):
Is that a good thing or a badthing?
That's a normative question,economists would say.
But do we perhaps choose to dosomething like that to get money
out quickly, because we don'thave a lot of time to think
about this?
So maybe we're not coming upwith the best program, but we're
(21:15):
getting money out and we'regetting it out quickly now,
before people lose their homes.
And so students in a classtalking about this.
What would they choose?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I'm not sure that it would look too different from
what the US government did.
Again, it's more just thefeeling of you know, you feel a
little screwed.
You feel a little, hey, theymade this decision.
I don't know if it was the bestor the worst or if there could
have been better, if it wasrelatively good or not.
(21:47):
It almost kind of doesn'tmatter, because it wasn't my
decision, I wasn't a part of it.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
And now but the time will come when it is your
decision, and maybe the empathythat you would hope people have
for how you're feeling would bewhat would I do?
What if I were the decisionmaker in that situation?
So if the result of that is anumber of things you know deeper
(22:20):
federal debt, higher taxes,result in inflation, whatever
those problems were, were theyworth it?
I don't know the answer to thatand I don't think any of us do,
but the process of deliberatedecision-making by smart people
(22:46):
and here we need to talk aminute because it's so trite and
easy to say, oh no, we had abunch of idiots who made these
decisions.
Sometimes you make the bestdecisions you can in the times
that you can make them.
So I've never really presentedit this way to students, but I
(23:08):
think I try to create empathyabout macroeconomic decisions.
Sometimes.
You know, let's look at whatthe problem was that needed to
be solved and what were ouroptions.
Would we have made the sameones?
Would we have made differentones?
(23:28):
Even if we would have madedifferent ones, don't we feel a
little bit for the people whohad to make those tough?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
choices Do you at least recognize?
I hear that perspective.
I really do.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I think this is where it's hard for people even like
me who haven't studied economics, is to understand the interplay
between all these differentmacroeconomic factors Inflation,
deficit spending, the interestrates and all these different
things.
So that not understanding and Ican remember as an undergraduate
taking a macroeconomics classand my eyes started rolling in
(24:05):
my head some days because Ididn't always get it but that
notion that there's thisinteresting pattern of many
events Absolutely that moststudents and most adults don't
always understand, and so thereagain we're kind of going back
to your education can maybe helpyou overcome some of this
hopelessness.
(24:25):
Just like when Dr Bryant wastalking about how we have these
periods of great civil rights,positive things in civil rights,
and then we have negativereactions and back and forth,
and how we've had that fromeverything from Reconstruction
through the Civil RightsMovement and the Reagan years to
Obama and the things we're inright now.
(24:46):
So again, that's long beforeyou were born, long before we
were born, and so that's notvery comforting.
But knowing that there is apattern and that there's some
sensible reason to some of thiscan help there's some sensible
(25:06):
reason to some of this can help.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
You know, this is certainly not my field, but I
admire the people who capturestories in history, the stories
that talk about how people feltin the moment, any age, because
(25:38):
in some way we connect, we say,oh, I felt that way and that's
from 100 years ago, or 50 or 20or 10, whatever, or before the
pandemic, and maybe that's agood point towards hopelessness,
because, you know, I think it'seasy, especially for a young
person, to say gosh, if this ishow they felt about the state of
(25:58):
the economy a hundred years agoand it's how I feel about it
what is there any hope that in ahundred years it's going to
change?
In a hundred years they stillfeel this way.
You know, that's the thing thatprofessor Bryant said was.
You know, his kind of takeawaywas yes, some things are worse,
some things are better, and it'skind of this.
(26:20):
It's somehow stayed at like thesame level.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
But do you remember he also said one way to not let
it stay at the same level is tofight.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
He definitely said to fight and that's a great call
to action and I loved it.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Fight, not with your hands and guns and things like
that, but to fight for right,right right.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Fight with your voice , fight with your vote, and I
definitely see that.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
And fight with arguments.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
With your mind, with your mind.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
You know, let me—this is going to sound a little
silly, but do you know who MrRogers was?
Of course, from theneighborhood, from the
neighborhood, yeah.
Do you know that?
He used to tell a story aboutbeing scared when he was a
little boy and his mother wouldsay to him look for the heroes.
(27:14):
I'm going to go back to whatyou said a minute ago, about 100
years ago.
Oh my goodness, if we werehelpless 100 years and hopeless
100 years ago and we're hopelessnow, we're always going to be
hopeless.
What happened in that 100 years?
Didn't incredible wonderfulthings happen in that 100?
Speaker 3 (27:34):
years and despite all those amazing people, those
heroes of time, despite all oftheir work over a hundred years,
we still feel just as hopeless.
So doesn't that taint thebelief in your heroes?
If you can be this hero to time, your heroes, if you can be
(27:59):
this hero to time, a hundredyears later, we can still chant
your name and yet.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
So people are just as hopeless.
See, I have to argue with thepremise here Okay, hopelessness,
okay, and I need to do thatwhile acknowledging your
feelings.
I've said that a couple oftimes.
But there are all kinds ofmetrics that argue against that.
Okay, okay, the increase in theworld happiness metrics.
(28:26):
Okay, out of the United Nations.
Okay, okay, Read those reports.
The decrease in the miseryindex.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Is that global?
But what about a little moremicro?
Has it gone up in the US aswell?
Speaker 4 (28:42):
I'm so very glad that you asked that, because in one
of the graphics in the 2023report it shows is it a
chloropleth map?
I think the geographers call it.
It shows a map of happiness inthe US, and do you know one of
(29:03):
the states that is the happiest?
Oh, wow, that's.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I'm sorry to tell you , I feel like that's not good
news.
We're not that happy.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
It's interesting because I'm envisioning the map
right now, but it's, you know,orange is not as happy as green,
and we've got orange along theeastern and western coasts and
down the middle of the country,from north to south.
It is more green, it is happier.
Okay, so you walked into it, Ilet you do it.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, no, that's fun, that's fun.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Well, and the other thing too, I would just add, and
this is a hard pill for anybodyto swallow, but I can remember
having this starry-eyed beliefwhen I went off to college that
you know I had this great lifeahead of me.
And then you get to college andyou realize there's some people
(30:07):
there that are smarter than you.
You used to be the smartestperson in the room.
Oh yeah, and there's morecompetition out there than you
thought.
And then you get to find out oh, I just come from this part of
the country and a whole bunch ofpeople from the east and west
coast, and they have a wholedifferent way of being, and so
what I valued and what theyvalued were different, and so
that was disillusioning andconfusing.
An adult is bringing yourawareness of what's possible
(30:41):
both to a little bit morerealistic level at the same time
not losing your hope that youcan aspire beyond your parents
or what you see is going onaround you.
That's a tricky thing to do,but, but again, I come back to
something that both of us reallybelieve in is that the more you
learn about your ownintelligence, the more you learn
(31:05):
about the things that scare you, the more likely you are to
have a balanced and more hopefulviewpoint.
Balanced and more hopefulviewpoint.
Now I have to say this too Ifeel as though there's this
thing that we've talked aboutbefore, called doom scrolling.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
And I think, doom scrolling.
I personally have experiencedit and I can get into that, you
know.
And you know you can let me andlook at myself and or look at
me and look at into that, youknow, and you can let me and
look at myself and look at meand look at Professor Doty and
see, you know, we've both gotpretty good lives.
We've both got good jobs.
I've got a PhD.
She's a distinguished professor, I'm a distinguished professor.
We've got kids that are prettysuccessful, a house that I'm
(31:47):
still paying off on, but I don'tknow about yours.
But I am driving a 22-year-oldcar that's beat up on every side
of it and I have to roll downthe window to open the door from
the outside.
But that's a choice I make.
I don't want to spend the moneyright now to buy a fancy new
car.
It's an opportunity choice.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Cost yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Opportunity cost.
But where I was going is thatwe also don't have something.
You have which is 50, 60.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Oh my, did you just hit on the most valuable of
those scarce resources thatwe've talked about time?
Speaker 2 (32:28):
You've got time.
And so when I hear you sayyou're hopeless about the time
in front of you, I want to saybut you, but you can change your
hope.
You can't give me some of yourtime, you've got it.
And so both of us, I think, aredeeply sympathetic with you,
(32:49):
and one of the reasons why Isaid let's devote as many of
these podcasts as we can tohelping people in your group to
feel more hope without sayingwell, you just, you know, just
grow up and get you know, put onyour big boy pants.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
We're not saying that at all, but it's easy to make
generalizations withoutinformation, and so people like
Dr Doty Professor Doty can giveyou information that can help
you sort through yourhopelessness, at least in terms
of your economic.
I know that when ProfessorBryant was here he helped me
(33:22):
sort through some of myhopelessness about some of the
social attitudes in our country.
He reminded me of some thingsthat helped me remind.
You know, wait a minute.
You know, don't just doomscroll, think about all the
heroes that you know.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Hard to say, but hard to tell people not to doom
scroll.
Yeah, Professor Doty, I have aquestion.
Certainly so.
If you were a college studenttoday, you started class
yesterday where would your hopecome from?
Speaker 4 (33:56):
How do I do this and not be self-serving, I would say
, oh my goodness, you get totake Dr Doty's class.
I had the most amazing firstday of class and I want to
change my major and be aneconomics major because I love
it.
I think the energy that youspoke of, the excitement that
(34:19):
you spoke of earlier, feeds onitself, and I had optimistic
students in class and I don'tmean to make it an N of one, you
feel it.
You said the air was vibrating.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
And I think we capture that energy.
Let me talk to you.
I talked about a little bitabout the happiness index and
the decline, you know, andmisery index.
But there's some other things,things.
There is so much service,volunteer work, philanthropy in
(35:00):
this world, okay, and you said,no, bring it down.
You know, make it local,locally, okay, statewide,
nationwide, worldwide.
We're seeing it and it does somuch good.
It does good, of course, forthe beneficiaries of the
(35:20):
philanthropy, but it also doesgood for the people who are
giving.
And then what happens to thepeople who are watching the
givers and watching thebeneficiaries?
That's inspiring.
We've talked a little bitbefore about personal finance.
In my personal finance coursesI talk about giving back and
(35:42):
service and charity andvolunteerism and philanthropy.
And when you see the peopleengaged in those sorts of
outreach activities, they'reinspiring.
Those are heroes.
And when you see the good, okay, sometimes they're dealing with
misery but they're doingsomething positive and that's
(36:07):
empowering.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Yeah, I like that.
I like that a lot.
I think that's a place togenuinely.
I think that's a place togenuinely find some hope is in
the nonprofit.
I say this as someone who is innonprofits but I really do feel
that way.
If you feel like the economy iseffed and you feel like things
(36:30):
are stacked against the workingclass, the people who are really
trying to address those issuesare the nonprofits and are the
service organizations andprograms and stuff like that.
And if that's something that'sreally on your heart, I feel
like that is, professor Doty, Ireally like that.
(36:50):
I had not thought about it, butthat is a place to find hope is
these programs.
Whatever your what your rareresource is, whether it's time,
it may not be finances, butmaybe it's energy.
If you're a doom scroller,maybe just make it a priority to
interact with you know ahandful of nonprofits social
(37:13):
media accounts and that'll helptheir algorithm Like I'm a big
believer of like get in whereyou fit in, so like.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
I don't know if this will apply to what we're talking
about.
You can always cut it out if itdoesn't.
But today in my first class Ihad my I read, read with my
students.
At them reading, I read a poemwritten by Lord Byron, written
in about 1825.
Okay, and what's that?
200 years ago?
But before I read the poem Isaid how many of you all have
(37:42):
had a bad breakup or seen a badbreakup?
Boy, I got some nods.
And then I said how many of youall have been the victim of
gossip?
And boy, there were some nodsthere.
And boy, there were some nodsthere.
And then we got into this poemand they realized this man, 200
years ago, had experiencedalmost the same feelings and had
to deal with people gossipingabout them.
(38:04):
And then, when we got even moreinto it and discovered that
there were some real interestingthings going on there about the
way he created the language sothat people in the know would
recognize how intimate andloving it had been, and little
sparks went off in the room andI think a lot of people realized
, you know, just like they'reheroes every century and every
(38:25):
decade hopefully almost everyyear there's human feelings that
aren't too different from yearto year to year Sure.
And this is a man whose fatherdied before he was born and who
had a title and a fancy estatebut no money, spent his whole
life in debt, the most famouspoet of the period, and you know
(38:48):
he died in a heroic cause.
He went to help the Greeksfight against the Turks.
He built his own, he raised hisown money for an army Talk
about philanthropy.
It's a different kind ofphilanthropy, but he died of
malaria leading the Greeksagainst these repressive Turks
200 years ago.
(39:09):
Golly, that sounds familiar andeven if it seems old, I think
the human heart is the same Nate.
I think the human heart is thesame.
I think the hurts and thefeelings are not that different
from your generation, to yourparents' generation, from the
generation of children thatyou'll have, and there's nothing
(39:30):
, a whole lot, that's really newunder the sun.
It seems really dark right now.
Let me tell you something itseems real dark to a lot of us
that are older than you.
So you're buying into or youknow, picking up on that vibe is
a sign of your astuteness, ofyour sensitivity.
But you're doing the rightthing right now, which is you're
learning, you know and you'reasking the questions of experts,
(39:53):
and I've been trying to bringexperts to you to help you.
That's where you're going tofind him is a place like this
and ultimately you can getyourself out of it.
Now I happen to know you have atheory.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah, I want to get into that, I'm hoping you'd like
to get to one of these, yes,yeah, because we've been talking
for almost an hour now.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Yeah, we're close, we're 40, 41 minutes.
But Could I just talk aboutsomething from my first day
yesterday?
Yeah, so you did somethingsimilar to what you did and how
funny this is.
You know in English literatureand in economics.
But I asked my students haveyou ever made a mistake?
How many hands went up?
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Right Everybody.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
In economics we ignore sunk costs.
Sunk costs you can think of asmistakes.
Whatever's been done in thepast, whatever we've spent,
whatever happened in the past,is a sunk cost.
In economics there's amarginalism principle.
(40:59):
It's one of the four principleswe talk about in economics and
the marginalism principle is wemake decisions on the margin, on
the additional, on the next one, on the supplemental, going
forward.
So how empowering is that?
(41:23):
To say what happened before isirrelevant to what I'm going to
do from this moment onward.
Talk about empowering.
It really is Shake it off.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Go forward.
Yeah, it is hard.
It's hard for young people whodon't have the advantage of a
seasoned perspective of life tosee how much the human spirit
can recover from, just howresilient the human spirit is.
Spirit can recover from.
(41:57):
You know just how resilient thehuman spirit is.
I think that's why I'm doingthe things with my life that I
am today is that like I just hada really I'm going to cut all
this out, but I had a reallystrange path growing up, a very
you know, really dark, you knowstoried path growing up, and one
of the main things that ittaught me through all of it was
(42:20):
exactly that just how resilientthe human spirit is and how much
you can recover from and howfar you can recover from
terrible things.
And so I think for most peoplemy age, however, they have not
seen that yet.
Y'all have seen that.
Y'all have experienced you havefriends who have come back from
(42:41):
, you know, thousands in debt toor died, or killed themselves.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
That's not the direction I was going.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
I have Me too, but what I'm saying people who
didn't go that far and came backwhat I'm saying is we're going
to cut some of that.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
We're going to cut a lot of this.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
That's the thing about podcasts.
What?
Speaker 3 (42:59):
I'm saying is y'all have seen people come within
inches of financial ruin andrecover.
Y'all have seen the economyfall and recover.
We have only seen the economyfall.
Some of us come.
Our first developmental yearswere the 2008 housing crisis.
(43:21):
You have to remember that inour very, very narrow scope of
what is the American economy hasnot been positive.
Speaker 4 (43:32):
Oh, but it has.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Oh, but it has, oh, but it has.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
That's where your perception, the crash, the great
recession that we talked aboutstarting in 2007, and the
housing crash in 2008,.
We recovered oh man, did werecover?
And then there was COVID, andso even we're tired of talking
(43:59):
about COVID.
We're done, we're beyond it.
But isn't that great, becauseeven the high inflation that we
saw post-COVID last year hascome down 4%, when the average
over decades is between 3% and4%.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Right, we never addressed.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
So it came down from 8% to 4%.
But see, that doesn't feelmeaningful to you it doesn't,
and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
It matters, but it takes the power, it steals a
little oomph away from it, toknow that, whether inflation is
8 or 4 or 2, minimum wage hasnot followed it for a long time.
(44:52):
And that's the issue.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
But is minimum wage the best standard to make your
measurement by?
It's what I'm wondering.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
It's your paycheck it is.
I think that's a big standard.
I think that, while there aremany companies who have decided
to, despite the minimum wage,pay better because that's what
the market demands that's thefun of capitalism, right there
(45:24):
are a lot of companies who stillpay minimum wage.
Or here's a side tangent thatwe don't have to go down, but
just to acknowledge it the wholetipping system in America and
how that robs a lot of people oftheir fair pay.
But I can tell that you havesome numbers.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
When we've had these kinds of conversations before,
we've tried to figure out whichdemographic do we want to talk
about.
You know where do we want tocapture our numbers, because
this is a big issue, so I wantedto share just one with you,
please.
If we take it when we look atthe income categories in the
(46:03):
nation, we talk about quintiles5-20% groupings of income.
If income were equal alongthose five groupings, then each
20% would have the same amount.
Okay, the first 20%, the second, the third, the fourth, the
(46:23):
fifth would all have the sameincome.
Now Let me just get a feel foryou here.
Is that what you would like tosee?
No, okay, good, we don't haveto go any further than that
right now.
So let me take that middlequintile, okay.
(46:45):
So we're not talking about thebottom 40% and we're not talking
about the top 40 percent.
We're talking about the middle20.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
The middle, that's middle class, correct I?
Speaker 4 (46:56):
don't like to talk about class, let's talk about
income.
It's the middle income.
Okay, so middle income hasgrown over from, say, about mid
60s to 20, from, say, aboutmid-60s to looking just at 2021,
(47:24):
from about a mean average of$7,000 to $77,000.
That's middle income, middle ofthe middle.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
They used to make $7,000, and now they make
$70,000.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
Right.
Okay, in that same period oftime because I know we talked
about these things housingprices have increased about that
same amount.
It's not everything that is thesame and I'm not trying to say
that it is, but the data show usthat this is not the doom and
(48:00):
gloom that many people aretalking about.
Look at the Census Bureauinformation, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics information, theFederal Reserve Bureau of
Economic Analysis In 2023, rightnow.
(48:21):
I was actually looking at the2021 numbers, and the reason for
that is we're often finalizinga couple years backward.
When I talked about thehappiness values, they were
spring 2023.
So they were pretty recent.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
So my question is so you said that from seven to
70,000, right, that's income forthe middle group.
Yes, do we know?
And you said housing hasincreased at that same rate,
about that same rate.
What is that rate?
(48:59):
So that?
Speaker 2 (49:00):
means that if people 20 years ago, or when was your
first date, 60?
Okay, so that would be.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
I'm actually looking 67 to 21.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
What would the relationship of that increase be
to the increase of inflation?
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Inflation over that period of time has averaged
about 3.8% annually.
Okay, but you have to rememberthat inflation is an annual
number, so we don't talk aboutinflation over decades because
(49:37):
it's an annual change.
What we do talk about is theconsumer price index.
Okay, and the consumer priceindex is the market basket of
goods you know.
Assume to be relativelyconstant year to year.
Sure, okay, and that I havedata from 1913.
(50:01):
Okay, okay, to 2023.
Okay, and this is consumerprice index data that comes out
of the Federal Reserve Bureau ofLabor Statistics.
It's all the same.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Which are believable sources.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
Credible sources we're going to use here.
Okay, that is all over theplace in these years.
Sometimes it's as high as 17,18.
I think once it was 21%, andsometimes it has actually fallen
.
Ok, so it's a negative.
(50:36):
Negative couple percent.
Ok, and one year is as bad asyou know negative 10.3.
Ok, so that's, we would callthat deflation, and in many ways
that's more serious thaninflation, you know.
And these averaged, okay, getus to that.
(51:01):
You know, average inflationnumber of 3.8%.
Okay, so my point was just wecould look at years where it was
terrible and years where it waswonderful.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
How has it been the past couple years?
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Okay, so I'm so glad you asked.
So we look at 4% this year, 8%last year, 4% the year before,
1.2%.
The year before that, 1.8%.
The year before that.
The year before that, 1.8.
The year before that, averagingin the twos and threes for a
couple decades.
Speaker 3 (51:40):
So it's been twos and threes.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Went up to eight.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Went up to eight and now it's at four Right.
So this experience that you'refeeling, that young people are
feeling, and eight was last year, wasn't it?
Speaker 4 (51:55):
Or two years ago.
It is a nearness, you'refeeling it because it's so
current and you don't have theinstitutional memory.
You don't have the experientialmemory, and that's some of what
we can do in education.
I don't teach these numbers.
This is not important on itsown, but it's contextual and it
(52:23):
helps to say oh, it's not thedoom and gloom.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
It was worse last year than it is already.
It's better this year.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Let's pause because you're so right about that
sentence.
It just needs the smallest edit.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Face it.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Here's what it needs, because for the past is this a
four as well?
So for the past three yearsit's been four and eight and
four.
So the sentence is you're right, it feels it's bad right now,
but it's not doom and gloom.
So you're right to say it's notdoom and gloom in the grand
scheme of things.
Look, it's going to get back towhere it was.
(52:53):
It is this we have thislong-term trend of it's normally
here, but you're right, rightnow it actually is terrible.
That doesn't mean it willcontinue to be terrible and have
hope that it'll come backaround.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
But this year it's half as terrible as it was last
year.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Sure, but half Sure, but it's still twice as terrible
as it used to be.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
I can play with that again if you'd like.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
No, I like, Don't play with it.
Go ahead.
No, he doesn't want you to Goahead.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
No, that's okay.
That's all right.
Oh, you wanted you were doingthe correction.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
I thought you wanted me to do the correction.
You're fine.
I just I think that's.
And I'm in this weird positionbecause, you know, I must expose
.
I do have hope.
I do have hope for the future.
Speaker 4 (53:38):
I want that on the podcast it will be on there.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
I do have hope for the future.
My hope came from a weird placeand I think maybe at the end of
this entire series I'll explainthat part.
But I do have hope.
So I'm in a weird position ofplaying devil's advocate for the
hopeless, and that is how Ihave rationalized it.
All is to know.
Wait, it feels hopeless becauseit's presenting as hopeless.
(54:07):
It feels hopeless because ifyou take this little slice of
the pie that we have lived, thenit looks hopeless.
It's only when youcontextualize it with it all,
but only yes, you know whenyou're down here.
Speaker 4 (54:26):
Yes, it feels hopeless.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
She's drawing a graph , and you know, and a mountain,
and now we're down in the valley.
Speaker 4 (54:32):
Yeah, and this we recover.
We always recover from this.
Speaker 3 (54:38):
Yes, life is ebbs and flows and while we are, you
know, on the bottom side of thiswave, if you're born within
this bottom side of the wave,things feel hopeless and then it
comes back around.
It's true, it's normally thecase, it's just hard.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
It's just hard.
And it's especially hard whenyou're not sure what you want to
do and if you'll get a jobdoing it.
When you get there and peoplesay there's some jobs that
haven't been invented yet, thatdoesn't help you much, right,
but I'll tell you this.
Right, but I'll tell you thismy two sons, one of whom is just
barely employed for his firstjob, is making more than his
(55:23):
father makes, and he just gotout of college and he's not
nearly as skilled as his father.
And you talk about his oldfather going.
Damn, you know that's hopeless.
No, don't put that in there.
But the point is that hold yourbreath, keep exercising, get
your sleep, eat well, love yourfriends and wake up tomorrow.
(55:47):
Wake up tomorrow, yeah, andwake up tomorrow.
Wake up tomorrow, yeah, andyou've got 20, 40, 50, 60, 70
years of tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
At least I won't go into it.
That's a hopeful statement forsome people I know.
I used to really struggle withmental health and the idea of
having 60 more years wasterrifying.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
Yeah, I hear you, I hear you.
Speaker 3 (56:24):
Here's a takeaway I have Because we didn't go as
much into the social media'sinfluence of this as maybe we
could have, because it's where alot of the feeling of doom and
gloom comes from.
A lot of our fear about theeconomy comes from these fear
mongers who are sitting there onyour phone everywhere you look,
(56:44):
saying everything is horrible,the Rome is falling, and all
this kind of stuff so they'llget more, more clicks.
Because it yeah, it sells.
And it's hard because we're inthis weird place of algorithms
are just becoming a thing, andright now it's commonplace for
them to take advantage of yoursubconscious feelings, where
(57:06):
they don't just show you goodthings.
They show you things becausethey know it scares you and
they'll keep popping it up, Evenif you don't want to see it.
They show it things becausethey know it scares you and
they'll keep popping it up, Evenif you don't want to see it.
They show it to you anyway, andso one of the takeaways that I
feel like worth mentioning tellme if I'm wrong.
I would say to students aboutthe economy we're freaking out.
It's hard to look away, butlook away and trust that it's
(57:29):
going to get better and justlive every day economically
smart.
Speaker 2 (57:35):
Keep building your own house, keep building the
bricks in your own education.
Speaker 3 (57:40):
Yeah.
Keep following the things thatinterest you and learn
absolutely better and maybe justlet go of that worry of this
grand state of the economics andtrust that there's very good
reason to believe that thingsare going to get better.
The trend is there that thingsrecover, and so trust in that
(58:01):
trend.
Is that fair to say?
Speaker 4 (58:03):
I think that's fair to say.
And now I'd go a little bitbeyond that to look at what's in
your control and choose to dothe things in your control that
give you hope, and you know whatthey are.
Whatever you and the greateryou out there, the things that
(58:26):
make you happy, the things thatmake you feel worthwhile and
productive and like you'remaking a difference, those
things will empower you.
Speaker 3 (58:38):
And if you haven't found that yet.
Stop what you're doing and findit.
Drop everything and go findthose things that make hard days
a little easier.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
You know, one of the things I talk about the first
couple weeks of class are theseven vectors of student
development.
The first one is developingcompetencies, and then it goes
next to building.
You know, breaking away fromyour family, becoming autonomous
, but then learning how to beinterdependent.
But it also gets down reallygot down up to finding the
(59:12):
things that you value the most,finding what you care about the
most and, ultimately, what areyour values, finding your
integrity.
And, in the midst of all that,you're developing your identity
as well.
And this is the time when youget to do that.
And this is the time when youget to do that.
You know, once you get outthere and you're working away
(59:34):
after you've graduated andyou're trying to get a job,
hopefully a lot of that'salready started to get in place.
So this is a great time to bedoing those things Working on
you, but not in a selfish way.
Working on you so that, whenyou're finished, you're a finer
(59:54):
human being to give more back tothe world and to whom people
want to turn and in whom peoplehave hope.
Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
Cool, I like that.
Something that is verypractical along those lines are
that core courses at theuniversity teach six very
distinct competencies outside ofour content, and they are
(01:00:24):
critical thinking andquantitative analysis, and
communication in oral, writtenand technology forms.
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Cultural knowledge.
Speaker 4 (01:00:35):
Teamwork, social responsibility and personal
responsibility Okay, and thoseare very powerful skills that we
take out of a college educationbeyond content and there are
things you can work on.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
You can change those Right, you can change those.
Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
Yeah, and there's always hope in that.
And focusing on your scope ofinfluence yeah, and a lot of
those things are your ownpersonal finances.
Yep, yep and maybe you have alittle hope if your money's
right you know, let's haveanother podcast about personal
finances, yep, yep.
And maybe you have a littlehope if your money's right, you
know.
Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Yeah, let's have another podcast about personal
finance.
Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
I would love to do that.
That's a whole different.
Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
I love the whole.
You have sunk costs.
That's you know, because a lotof times that's one of the worst
things that young peopleexperience is they make a
mistake and they can't live aday.
Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
Oh, yeah it just.
Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
And and economics tell you it's sunk cost.
Just forget about it.
Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
That's an economics concept.
Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Yeah, I like that.
That could be another episode.
Professor Doty, do you haveanything else?
Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
I don't, but thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
I've enjoyed this.
Thanks for being on Great.
How do you feel?
Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
I feel good, I actually feel hopeful.
But most of all I want you know, over the time of working on
this together, I've become Ithought I understood students
real well, and I want to alwayslearn better about what my
students care about.
And this is something that hastroubled me too is that I don't
want you all to feel hopeless,because I don't feel that hope
(01:02:06):
and yet I get that you do.
So we'll just keep on truckingaway on this.
We'll keep on inviting smartpeople like Professor Doty to
help us think about it Great.
Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Well, here let us end out the episode.
This has been the Ask Dr Rosspodcast.
If you have any questions, youcan always email us at
adrquestions at gmailcom.
Thanks so much for listening.
Stay tuned to the Ask Dr Ross podcast.
It's created to give you infoto succeed at college.
Our hosts are highly qualified.
Dr Catherine Ross is a memberof the University of Texas
System's Academy ofDistinguished Teachers.
She's also a popular professorof 19th century English
literature.
Co-host and multimedia editorNathan Wood provides a student
(00:27):
perspective.
Ask Dr Ross is a communityservice of the University of
Texas at Tyler.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hi, I'm Katherine Ross and this is a podcast for
parents, students in school whoare thinking about going to
college, college students whoparents students in school who
are thinking about going tocollege, college students who
are already here, adults who arethinking of maybe going back to
college and really anyone whowants to know more about what
life in colleges anduniversities is like today in
the US of A.
I'm here with my friend, nathanWitt, who's a student here.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
If you'd like to ask Dr Ross a question, you can
email us at adrquestions atgmailcom.
Today we're going to talk moreabout hope, so we've got a mini
series covering the question howam I, as a college student,
supposed to have hope for thefuture?
And so we're going to dive alittle deeper into that,
(01:19):
specifically talking about thefinances, the state of the
economy and what are we walkinginto.
What have we been handed asthis new generation walking into
the working class?
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, and part of the reason why we've got this
series going is that Nathan andI've talked a lot about how it
just seems like everything'sreally gone wrong in the last
couple of years ever since COVIDand people are talking about so
many bad things measures of thepolitics, of the economy, of
the job situation and so on.
So doom and gloom.
And whereas people like me cansee it from a little bit larger,
(01:54):
longer view, it's harder foryoung folks to think about it.
I'm introducing a colleague andfriend of mine, Professor Susan
Doty, who is a distinguishedteaching professor at University
of Texas, at Tyler, in theCollege of Arts and Sciences,
specifically in the socialsciences department.
That's correct.
She is also a distinguishedsenior lecturer, the executive
(02:17):
director of the Center forEconomic Education and Financial
Literacy at the university here, and she's the past president
of the National Association ofEconomic Educators.
So she comes to us with allsorts of hats still on her head
and kind of in her back pocket,and I think she's got a lot to
tell us Great.
Having said all that, Susan, doyou want to start talking to
(02:39):
Nathan about economic hope?
Speaker 4 (02:41):
Oh, economic hope.
First of all, thank you so muchfor inviting me.
This is a wonderful opportunityto talk to you.
Before we started today, wewere saying what an exciting
time of the year it is.
The first week of the new fallsemester especially is just so
full of energy and, I think,hope.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I think so too.
Yeah, I would definitely.
I use the word excitement whenwe're talking.
It's, there's a, there's anlike, An energy, yeah, an energy
.
It's like the air is vibratinga little bit, which is cool.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
And so folks who listen to this may not realize,
but we are recording this thefirst week of classes in the
fall 2023 semester.
Yeah, where are we going fromhere?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Professor Doty, I think we can start really broad
and then let's start chippingaway at it.
Young people I guess I shouldspecify first and say that I'm
kind of playing devil's advocatehere.
Right, I am representing thehopeless youth right now, and so
let me ask you this questionAre they all hopeless?
I don't know if they're allhopeless, but I think that
(03:47):
there's certainly a demographicout there that's pretty large
and holds a big representationin my generation.
So it looks like everything isstacked against us.
It looks like systematicdecisions were made to put us at
a disadvantage the incomingworking class.
(04:09):
Is that a misconception?
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Oh, I certainly think that it is, and I think it's
important to acknowledge thatyou are representing people who
feel that way and those feelingsare important.
But one of the things thathappens at university is that we
look at the data okay and welook at primary sources, and we
(04:37):
learn to distinguish betweenrumor and fact.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Right, what you see on a headline on some kind of
site or blog or website and whatthe research articles are
finding.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, Absolutely Sure .
So let me ask you first of all,what is the bad news that
you're talking?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
about To start with a hot-but button topic, I think
the.
What was the?
I'm trying to think of a short,easy term for it, I guess.
To start, I'll say the minimumwage compared to the rise of
inflation and how those two havenot grown as a pair.
(05:25):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
So that's certainly valid, but let's think about
what minimum wage is for.
Are you in college because andsacrificing your time and
investing in yourself so thatyou can earn minimum wage?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
No, but that could rabbit hole into a place of the
college diploma has less weightthan it did before, because even
I personally know a lot ofpeers who have gotten out of
college with that diploma andonly been able to find a minimum
(06:03):
wage job.
But we won't go there yet.
Yes, of course my intentionwith getting this diploma is
that it will platform me to geta better salary at the end of
the day.
That sounds cold, but of coursethat's definitely part of the
equation.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I want to add here I don't think it is cold.
I think all of us have torecognize that one of the main
reasons everybody goes tocollege is to make a good life.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
And that includes finding a really interesting
career that you're good at andwhere you get paid pretty well.
So there's no shame in sayingthat.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
I like that you say that here.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Yeah, okay, that we have seen over the past, you
know, maybe five, six decades achange in college graduation
rates from about 7% to about 37%.
Okay, so there's something thatis encouraging people to seek
higher education.
Sure, we have on my tagline,you know, on my university email
(07:04):
.
We have on my tagline, you know, on my university email.
My tagline is education is theultimate economic multiplier,
and I believe that, okay, andthat's more than money, that's
more, it's quality of life.
Sure, okay, and so there's alot of measures of quality of
(07:30):
life that show improvement overtime and again.
It's hard for someone who is notfeeling the love to show those
sorts of statistics, but one ofthe things is, you know, people
talk a lot about now isinflation, but our inflation
rate now is about 4%.
A year or two ago when it wasso very high, it was 8%, but it
wasn't very long ago, you know,decades ago, where it was double
(07:54):
digit inflation.
So we like to see it a littlebit lower than the 4% that it is
now.
You know, 2% would be better,but this is not a high inflation
rate and it's not an unexpectedinflation rate, given what
happened, you know, just threeyears ago during.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
COVID.
So one of the things I wouldlike to insert here, then, is
that there's a piece ofknowledge, of understanding
about the way the history, therecent history of our economic
situation has been going along,so that it puts that number,
which seems real scary, intoperspective within the last two
(08:37):
years, even right.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Absolutely, and if we think about what were you doing
in 20?
In 2020?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
2020.
Like before the pandemichappened.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Where were you in your life in 2020?
You were in high school orcollege.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
I was in college.
Yeah, I was living on campus ata college in Dallas.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Okay, all right.
In 2020, after COVID hit we didsome incredible things in terms
of pumping money into theeconomy.
We did it with aid to families,we did it with aid to
(09:19):
businesses, and we did it.
That's fiscal policy.
Fiscal policy is governmentpolicy, it's taxing and spending
decisions.
But we also did it withmonetary policy, federal reserve
policy, where interest rateswere lowered so that people and
businesses had access to fundsat low to almost zero interest
(09:47):
rates.
There was a cost to doing that.
We chose to do it.
We as a nation chose to do itbecause there was an emergency
that we responded to.
But the cost of that waspumping so much money into the
economy.
(10:07):
That increases demand.
What does an increase in demanddo?
It raises prices.
Okay, so that inflation thatwe've seen since was not
unexpected.
It was the cost We've talkedabout this before.
It was the opportunity cost ofthe decisions we made to help a
(10:29):
nation in crisis.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So it was not unexpected by the educated and I
think that's going to be one ofa few main headlines that we're
going to circle around a lotfor this conversation is how
important economic education isto feeling hope Be still my
heart.
But really, because I thinkthat's again why a lot of my
(10:54):
generation and young people ingeneral felt upset because the
people making these decisionsright.
When you say we decided to doto take this opportunity, you
didn't decide, I didn't decide,that you know and I.
Now we can discuss, we canrabbit hole and discuss who's to
(11:15):
blame for this reason, but Idon't think it's worth it.
For whatever reason.
I think in mass, my generationwas not informed that these
decisions were being made andcertainly you were in high
school?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You probably wasn't.
It wasn't on your radar Right.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
And didn't feel like we had any influence over these
decisions being made.
And yet we feel like we arefeeling the most the heaviest of
the brute force from that, youknow, opportunity cost.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
But let me remind you one thing Weren't college debt,
wasn't college debt held for along time?
Speaker 3 (11:54):
It was.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
So that there were some college students who
recognize it.
Now I know college debt isanother whole issue, but at
least they didn't.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Yeah, I was like do we want to go there?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Well, but I think that's an important piece of it.
It did impact the young peopleto hold off.
I've got a daughter-in-lawwho's still paying off some of
her law school loans, but itheld off for a couple years and
it really made a big difference.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
It did.
But this podcast is not forcollege students.
Our target audience for thispodcast is people coming into
college, so people who would nothave enjoyed those benefits.
The other thing is and this ismore of a, this is more Polly
Psy, but I'll just say, becausewe've had that conversation
already, it was a greatconversation.
Remind me his name, dr Bryant.
(12:39):
So we had that conversationwith Dr Bryant.
But there is definitely afeeling of the people who are
making these decisions, forthese cost opportunity decisions
, right, they are in a financialposition to not nearly feel the
(13:00):
sting of this side of thedecision.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
And a lot of you didn't vote for him either.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Right, exactly, we didn't vote for you.
It doesn't affect you nearly asmuch with the tax bracket
you're in and now I'm eating,you know, $5 ramen because you
thought it was worth it and Ididn't feel like I had any
choice in if I was willing totake on the brunt of that or not
(13:24):
.
But before we go into it, Ithink that we need to take a
step back and you need to tellus the Doty mantra, because, of
course, dr Ross and I know it,because we've had many
conversations about economicswith you, but our listeners
haven't heard it, and it's oneof my favorite things, so you
have to tell it.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
And we're going to have to revise this a little bit
.
Yeah, we'll toss some thingsaround, so that this will be at
the front and there may be somethings all of us have said we
don't want to say, but go ahead.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
So give the intro.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Okay.
So the Dodie mantra is this Ihave never taught a class or
conducted a workshop or given apresentation.
I don't believe withoutstarting with this, it's a
framing, economic way ofthinking, framing to start a
conversation Everything we valueis scarce.
Because everything we value isscarce, we can't have it all.
(14:16):
Because when we can't have itall, we have to make choices.
Every choice we make meansgiving up something else.
That most valued alternativethat we give up when we make a
choice is our opportunity cost,and that opportunity cost is the
real cost of the choices wemake.
(14:36):
Could you give an example?
Absolutely, you know.
We can apply this toindividuals and households
making decisions, or managersand business firms making
decisions, or to politicians andgovernment making decisions.
Every time we choose to dosomething, we are choosing not
(14:56):
to do something else.
That could be as simple as abusiness that is choosing.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
Can we actually can we do a student choosing to go
to college?
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Abs, what a great one .
Okay, so we have, you know, ahigh school student who is
making one of the most importantdecisions of life, and it's not
just a financial decision.
But that student is saying if Igo to college, what am I giving
(15:35):
up to do?
It's not the cost, the pricetag of the education, the
education, it's the.
What else could I be doing?
Could I be an apprentice tobecome a plumber?
Could I go into the military?
(16:01):
Could I go work, you know, inthe oil fields?
What is the cost of educationin terms of what I would give up
to get it?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Another example I can live at home and save a lot of
money and have to drive an hourinto campus and miss out on a
lot of stuff that happens in thecollege life.
Or I can suck it up and pay alittle bit more money to live on
campus in the dorm and eat dormfood and be able to be in the
(16:27):
middle of things, where thingsare happening.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
So the way Dr Ross just added to that is reinforces
this idea of constantdecision-making and divergent
paths all along.
I'm talking with my hands,which your viewers will not be
able to see, but her hands aregoing wide.
She's making branches, and eachone of those decisions becomes a
(16:56):
choice and a refusal.
If you will, we can apply theeconomic way of decision making
to really any sort of choice wemake, again in households and
business firms and government,because individuals are always
making these choices.
So we, often people, tend tothink about good and bad choices
(17:21):
.
Sometimes we are making what webelieve is the better of bad
choices or the not quite asamazing of great choices.
Right, okay, and so you?
You grasped immediately theidea of opportunity cost and so
(17:45):
it's a weighing.
It's a weighing and adeliberate process of thinking
about what we're going to do.
Let's assume for a minute thatthe student who chooses
four-year college has made thatchoice deliberately, rationally.
(18:06):
Then we've got to believe thatstudent believes that the
benefits are greater than thecosts, or it wouldn't be
rational.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Great, so you've introduced the Doty mantra.
So now.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
By the way, I want you to send it to us in a
complete sentence so that we canpost it in quotation marks on
the website.
Yeah, we'll have that.
With the Dodi mantra.
The Dodi mantra.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Now we can circle back around to where I cut us
off.
So we're talking about thispolitical decision I guess you
would call this economicdecision made by our elected
officials, made by our electedofficials, and young people are
feeling maybe a littledisenfranchised, maybe a little
(18:55):
cut out of the loop, right,maybe a little bit of, you know,
same vein as taxation withoutrepresentation, kind of stuff
you know.
So how do you respond to thatperception that the young people
have?
What is your take on it?
Speaker 4 (19:10):
I think Dr Ross would agree with me.
You know, we don't tellstudents, we show students and
we create opportunities forstudents to aha.
You know, come to aha momentson their own by doing, and you
know, part of the way I woulddeal with this question in a
(19:34):
class, for example, is I wouldpresent economic problems and
have students work in teams tofigure out how to solve them.
So here you know, let's go backto COVID for just a minute,
because things happened at thattime that were so dramatic.
(19:54):
And so if we say, you know, thescenario that students are
going to work on is we havefamilies who cannot pay their
bills, Okay, what are we goingto do?
That's the problem.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
So let the banks foreclose on their homes, let
their credit scores be ruined,affecting them for years to come
.
Let them perhaps be evicted bylandlords.
Let children not have food.
(20:30):
Okay, you know I'm giving ahorrible case scenario, but I'm
doing it for a reason.
And if we have the means tomake that situation better by oh
dear, it's over our budget.
More deficit spending.
So the government borrows toget stimulus payments out.
(20:55):
Is that a good thing or a badthing?
That's a normative question,economists would say.
But do we perhaps choose to dosomething like that to get money
out quickly, because we don'thave a lot of time to think
about this?
So maybe we're not coming upwith the best program, but we're
(21:15):
getting money out and we'regetting it out quickly now,
before people lose their homes.
And so students in a classtalking about this.
What would they choose?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I'm not sure that it would look too different from
what the US government did.
Again, it's more just thefeeling of you know, you feel a
little screwed.
You feel a little, hey, theymade this decision.
I don't know if it was the bestor the worst or if there could
have been better, if it wasrelatively good or not.
(21:47):
It almost kind of doesn'tmatter, because it wasn't my
decision, I wasn't a part of it.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
And now but the time will come when it is your
decision, and maybe the empathythat you would hope people have
for how you're feeling would bewhat would I do?
What if I were the decisionmaker in that situation?
So if the result of that is anumber of things you know deeper
(22:20):
federal debt, higher taxes,result in inflation, whatever
those problems were, were theyworth it?
I don't know the answer to thatand I don't think any of us do,
but the process of deliberatedecision-making by smart people
(22:46):
and here we need to talk aminute because it's so trite and
easy to say, oh no, we had abunch of idiots who made these
decisions.
Sometimes you make the bestdecisions you can in the times
that you can make them.
So I've never really presentedit this way to students, but I
(23:08):
think I try to create empathyabout macroeconomic decisions.
Sometimes.
You know, let's look at whatthe problem was that needed to
be solved and what were ouroptions.
Would we have made the sameones?
Would we have made differentones?
(23:28):
Even if we would have madedifferent ones, don't we feel a
little bit for the people whohad to make those tough?
Speaker 3 (23:38):
choices Do you at least recognize?
I hear that perspective.
I really do.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
I think this is where it's hard for people even like
me who haven't studied economics, is to understand the interplay
between all these differentmacroeconomic factors Inflation,
deficit spending, the interestrates and all these different
things.
So that not understanding and Ican remember as an undergraduate
taking a macroeconomics classand my eyes started rolling in
(24:05):
my head some days because Ididn't always get it but that
notion that there's thisinteresting pattern of many
events Absolutely that moststudents and most adults don't
always understand, and so thereagain we're kind of going back
to your education can maybe helpyou overcome some of this
hopelessness.
(24:25):
Just like when Dr Bryant wastalking about how we have these
periods of great civil rights,positive things in civil rights,
and then we have negativereactions and back and forth,
and how we've had that fromeverything from Reconstruction
through the Civil RightsMovement and the Reagan years to
Obama and the things we're inright now.
(24:46):
So again, that's long beforeyou were born, long before we
were born, and so that's notvery comforting.
But knowing that there is apattern and that there's some
sensible reason to some of thiscan help there's some sensible
(25:06):
reason to some of this can help.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
You know, this is certainly not my field, but I
admire the people who capturestories in history, the stories
that talk about how people feltin the moment, any age, because
(25:38):
in some way we connect, we say,oh, I felt that way and that's
from 100 years ago, or 50 or 20or 10, whatever, or before the
pandemic, and maybe that's agood point towards hopelessness,
because, you know, I think it'seasy, especially for a young
person, to say gosh, if this ishow they felt about the state of
(25:58):
the economy a hundred years agoand it's how I feel about it
what is there any hope that in ahundred years it's going to
change?
In a hundred years they stillfeel this way.
You know, that's the thing thatprofessor Bryant said was.
You know, his kind of takeawaywas yes, some things are worse,
some things are better, and it'skind of this.
(26:20):
It's somehow stayed at like thesame level.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
But do you remember he also said one way to not let
it stay at the same level is tofight.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
He definitely said to fight and that's a great call
to action and I loved it.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Fight, not with your hands and guns and things like
that, but to fight for right,right right.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Fight with your voice , fight with your vote, and I
definitely see that.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
And fight with arguments.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
With your mind, with your mind.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
You know, let me—this is going to sound a little
silly, but do you know who MrRogers was?
Of course, from theneighborhood, from the
neighborhood, yeah.
Do you know that?
He used to tell a story aboutbeing scared when he was a
little boy and his mother wouldsay to him look for the heroes.
(27:14):
I'm going to go back to whatyou said a minute ago, about 100
years ago.
Oh my goodness, if we werehelpless 100 years and hopeless
100 years ago and we're hopelessnow, we're always going to be
hopeless.
What happened in that 100 years?
Didn't incredible wonderfulthings happen in that 100?
Speaker 3 (27:34):
years and despite all those amazing people, those
heroes of time, despite all oftheir work over a hundred years,
we still feel just as hopeless.
So doesn't that taint thebelief in your heroes?
If you can be this hero to time, your heroes, if you can be
(27:59):
this hero to time, a hundredyears later, we can still chant
your name and yet.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
So people are just as hopeless.
See, I have to argue with thepremise here Okay, hopelessness,
okay, and I need to do thatwhile acknowledging your
feelings.
I've said that a couple oftimes.
But there are all kinds ofmetrics that argue against that.
Okay, okay, the increase in theworld happiness metrics.
(28:26):
Okay, out of the United Nations.
Okay, okay, Read those reports.
The decrease in the miseryindex.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Is that global?
But what about a little moremicro?
Has it gone up in the US aswell?
Speaker 4 (28:42):
I'm so very glad that you asked that, because in one
of the graphics in the 2023report it shows is it a
chloropleth map?
I think the geographers call it.
It shows a map of happiness inthe US, and do you know one of
(29:03):
the states that is the happiest?
Oh, wow, that's.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
I'm sorry to tell you , I feel like that's not good
news.
We're not that happy.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
It's interesting because I'm envisioning the map
right now, but it's, you know,orange is not as happy as green,
and we've got orange along theeastern and western coasts and
down the middle of the country,from north to south.
It is more green, it is happier.
Okay, so you walked into it, Ilet you do it.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, no, that's fun, that's fun.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Well, and the other thing too, I would just add, and
this is a hard pill for anybodyto swallow, but I can remember
having this starry-eyed beliefwhen I went off to college that
you know I had this great lifeahead of me.
And then you get to college andyou realize there's some people
(30:07):
there that are smarter than you.
You used to be the smartestperson in the room.
Oh yeah, and there's morecompetition out there than you
thought.
And then you get to find out oh, I just come from this part of
the country and a whole bunch ofpeople from the east and west
coast, and they have a wholedifferent way of being, and so
what I valued and what theyvalued were different, and so
that was disillusioning andconfusing.
An adult is bringing yourawareness of what's possible
(30:41):
both to a little bit morerealistic level at the same time
not losing your hope that youcan aspire beyond your parents
or what you see is going onaround you.
That's a tricky thing to do,but, but again, I come back to
something that both of us reallybelieve in is that the more you
learn about your ownintelligence, the more you learn
(31:05):
about the things that scare you, the more likely you are to
have a balanced and more hopefulviewpoint.
Balanced and more hopefulviewpoint.
Now I have to say this too Ifeel as though there's this
thing that we've talked aboutbefore, called doom scrolling.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
And I think, doom scrolling.
I personally have experiencedit and I can get into that, you
know.
And you know you can let me andlook at myself and or look at
me and look at into that, youknow, and you can let me and
look at myself and look at meand look at Professor Doty and
see, you know, we've both gotpretty good lives.
We've both got good jobs.
I've got a PhD.
She's a distinguished professor, I'm a distinguished professor.
We've got kids that are prettysuccessful, a house that I'm
(31:47):
still paying off on, but I don'tknow about yours.
But I am driving a 22-year-oldcar that's beat up on every side
of it and I have to roll downthe window to open the door from
the outside.
But that's a choice I make.
I don't want to spend the moneyright now to buy a fancy new
car.
It's an opportunity choice.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
Cost yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Opportunity cost.
But where I was going is thatwe also don't have something.
You have which is 50, 60.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Oh my, did you just hit on the most valuable of
those scarce resources thatwe've talked about time?
Speaker 2 (32:28):
You've got time.
And so when I hear you sayyou're hopeless about the time
in front of you, I want to saybut you, but you can change your
hope.
You can't give me some of yourtime, you've got it.
And so both of us, I think, aredeeply sympathetic with you,
(32:49):
and one of the reasons why Isaid let's devote as many of
these podcasts as we can tohelping people in your group to
feel more hope without sayingwell, you just, you know, just
grow up and get you know, put onyour big boy pants.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
We're not saying that at all, but it's easy to make
generalizations withoutinformation, and so people like
Dr Doty Professor Doty can giveyou information that can help
you sort through yourhopelessness, at least in terms
of your economic.
I know that when ProfessorBryant was here he helped me
(33:22):
sort through some of myhopelessness about some of the
social attitudes in our country.
He reminded me of some thingsthat helped me remind.
You know, wait a minute.
You know, don't just doomscroll, think about all the
heroes that you know.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Hard to say, but hard to tell people not to doom
scroll.
Yeah, Professor Doty, I have aquestion.
Certainly so.
If you were a college studenttoday, you started class
yesterday where would your hopecome from?
Speaker 4 (33:56):
How do I do this and not be self-serving, I would say
, oh my goodness, you get totake Dr Doty's class.
I had the most amazing firstday of class and I want to
change my major and be aneconomics major because I love
it.
I think the energy that youspoke of, the excitement that
(34:19):
you spoke of earlier, feeds onitself, and I had optimistic
students in class and I don'tmean to make it an N of one, you
feel it.
You said the air was vibrating.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
And I think we capture that energy.
Let me talk to you.
I talked about a little bitabout the happiness index and
the decline, you know, andmisery index.
But there's some other things,things.
There is so much service,volunteer work, philanthropy in
(35:00):
this world, okay, and you said,no, bring it down.
You know, make it local,locally, okay, statewide,
nationwide, worldwide.
We're seeing it and it does somuch good.
It does good, of course, forthe beneficiaries of the
(35:20):
philanthropy, but it also doesgood for the people who are
giving.
And then what happens to thepeople who are watching the
givers and watching thebeneficiaries?
That's inspiring.
We've talked a little bitbefore about personal finance.
In my personal finance coursesI talk about giving back and
(35:42):
service and charity andvolunteerism and philanthropy.
And when you see the peopleengaged in those sorts of
outreach activities, they'reinspiring.
Those are heroes.
And when you see the good, okay, sometimes they're dealing with
misery but they're doingsomething positive and that's
(36:07):
empowering.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Yeah, I like that.
I like that a lot.
I think that's a place togenuinely.
I think that's a place togenuinely find some hope is in
the nonprofit.
I say this as someone who is innonprofits but I really do feel
that way.
If you feel like the economy iseffed and you feel like things
(36:30):
are stacked against the workingclass, the people who are really
trying to address those issuesare the nonprofits and are the
service organizations andprograms and stuff like that.
And if that's something that'sreally on your heart, I feel
like that is, professor Doty, Ireally like that.
(36:50):
I had not thought about it, butthat is a place to find hope is
these programs.
Whatever your what your rareresource is, whether it's time,
it may not be finances, butmaybe it's energy.
If you're a doom scroller,maybe just make it a priority to
interact with you know ahandful of nonprofits social
(37:13):
media accounts and that'll helptheir algorithm Like I'm a big
believer of like get in whereyou fit in, so like.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
I don't know if this will apply to what we're talking
about.
You can always cut it out if itdoesn't.
But today in my first class Ihad my I read, read with my
students.
At them reading, I read a poemwritten by Lord Byron, written
in about 1825.
Okay, and what's that?
200 years ago?
But before I read the poem Isaid how many of you all have
(37:42):
had a bad breakup or seen a badbreakup?
Boy, I got some nods.
And then I said how many of youall have been the victim of
gossip?
And boy, there were some nodsthere.
And boy, there were some nodsthere.
And then we got into this poemand they realized this man, 200
years ago, had experiencedalmost the same feelings and had
to deal with people gossipingabout them.
(38:04):
And then, when we got even moreinto it and discovered that
there were some real interestingthings going on there about the
way he created the language sothat people in the know would
recognize how intimate andloving it had been, and little
sparks went off in the room andI think a lot of people realized
, you know, just like they'reheroes every century and every
(38:25):
decade hopefully almost everyyear there's human feelings that
aren't too different from yearto year to year Sure.
And this is a man whose fatherdied before he was born and who
had a title and a fancy estatebut no money, spent his whole
life in debt, the most famouspoet of the period, and you know
(38:48):
he died in a heroic cause.
He went to help the Greeksfight against the Turks.
He built his own, he raised hisown money for an army Talk
about philanthropy.
It's a different kind ofphilanthropy, but he died of
malaria leading the Greeksagainst these repressive Turks
200 years ago.
(39:09):
Golly, that sounds familiar andeven if it seems old, I think
the human heart is the same Nate.
I think the human heart is thesame.
I think the hurts and thefeelings are not that different
from your generation, to yourparents' generation, from the
generation of children thatyou'll have, and there's nothing
(39:30):
, a whole lot, that's really newunder the sun.
It seems really dark right now.
Let me tell you something itseems real dark to a lot of us
that are older than you.
So you're buying into or youknow, picking up on that vibe is
a sign of your astuteness, ofyour sensitivity.
But you're doing the rightthing right now, which is you're
learning, you know and you'reasking the questions of experts,
(39:53):
and I've been trying to bringexperts to you to help you.
That's where you're going tofind him is a place like this
and ultimately you can getyourself out of it.
Now I happen to know you have atheory.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
Yeah, I want to get into that, I'm hoping you'd like
to get to one of these, yes,yeah, because we've been talking
for almost an hour now.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Yeah, we're close, we're 40, 41 minutes.
But Could I just talk aboutsomething from my first day
yesterday?
Yeah, so you did somethingsimilar to what you did and how
funny this is.
You know in English literatureand in economics.
But I asked my students haveyou ever made a mistake?
How many hands went up?
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Right Everybody.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
In economics we ignore sunk costs.
Sunk costs you can think of asmistakes.
Whatever's been done in thepast, whatever we've spent,
whatever happened in the past,is a sunk cost.
In economics there's amarginalism principle.
(40:59):
It's one of the four principleswe talk about in economics and
the marginalism principle is wemake decisions on the margin, on
the additional, on the next one, on the supplemental, going
forward.
So how empowering is that?
(41:23):
To say what happened before isirrelevant to what I'm going to
do from this moment onward.
Talk about empowering.
It really is Shake it off.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Go forward.
Yeah, it is hard.
It's hard for young people whodon't have the advantage of a
seasoned perspective of life tosee how much the human spirit
can recover from, just howresilient the human spirit is.
Spirit can recover from.
(41:57):
You know just how resilient thehuman spirit is.
I think that's why I'm doingthe things with my life that I
am today is that like I just hada really I'm going to cut all
this out, but I had a reallystrange path growing up, a very
you know, really dark, you knowstoried path growing up, and one
of the main things that ittaught me through all of it was
(42:20):
exactly that just how resilientthe human spirit is and how much
you can recover from and howfar you can recover from
terrible things.
And so I think for most peoplemy age, however, they have not
seen that yet.
Y'all have seen that.
Y'all have experienced you havefriends who have come back from
(42:41):
, you know, thousands in debt toor died, or killed themselves.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
That's not the direction I was going.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
I have Me too, but what I'm saying people who
didn't go that far and came backwhat I'm saying is we're going
to cut some of that.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
We're going to cut a lot of this.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
That's the thing about podcasts.
What?
Speaker 3 (42:59):
I'm saying is y'all have seen people come within
inches of financial ruin andrecover.
Y'all have seen the economyfall and recover.
We have only seen the economyfall.
Some of us come.
Our first developmental yearswere the 2008 housing crisis.
(43:21):
You have to remember that inour very, very narrow scope of
what is the American economy hasnot been positive.
Speaker 4 (43:32):
Oh, but it has.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Oh, but it has, oh, but it has.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
That's where your perception, the crash, the great
recession that we talked aboutstarting in 2007, and the
housing crash in 2008,.
We recovered oh man, did werecover?
And then there was COVID, andso even we're tired of talking
(43:59):
about COVID.
We're done, we're beyond it.
But isn't that great, becauseeven the high inflation that we
saw post-COVID last year hascome down 4%, when the average
over decades is between 3% and4%.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Right, we never addressed.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
So it came down from 8% to 4%.
But see, that doesn't feelmeaningful to you it doesn't,
and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
It matters, but it takes the power, it steals a
little oomph away from it, toknow that, whether inflation is
8 or 4 or 2, minimum wage hasnot followed it for a long time.
(44:52):
And that's the issue.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
But is minimum wage the best standard to make your
measurement by?
It's what I'm wondering.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
It's your paycheck it is.
I think that's a big standard.
I think that, while there aremany companies who have decided
to, despite the minimum wage,pay better because that's what
the market demands that's thefun of capitalism, right there
(45:24):
are a lot of companies who stillpay minimum wage.
Or here's a side tangent thatwe don't have to go down, but
just to acknowledge it the wholetipping system in America and
how that robs a lot of people oftheir fair pay.
But I can tell that you havesome numbers.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
When we've had these kinds of conversations before,
we've tried to figure out whichdemographic do we want to talk
about.
You know where do we want tocapture our numbers, because
this is a big issue, so I wantedto share just one with you,
please.
If we take it when we look atthe income categories in the
(46:03):
nation, we talk about quintiles5-20% groupings of income.
If income were equal alongthose five groupings, then each
20% would have the same amount.
Okay, the first 20%, the second, the third, the fourth, the
(46:23):
fifth would all have the sameincome.
Now Let me just get a feel foryou here.
Is that what you would like tosee?
No, okay, good, we don't haveto go any further than that
right now.
So let me take that middlequintile, okay.
(46:45):
So we're not talking about thebottom 40% and we're not talking
about the top 40 percent.
We're talking about the middle20.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
The middle, that's middle class, correct I?
Speaker 4 (46:56):
don't like to talk about class, let's talk about
income.
It's the middle income.
Okay, so middle income hasgrown over from, say, about mid
60s to 20, from, say, aboutmid-60s to looking just at 2021,
(47:24):
from about a mean average of$7,000 to $77,000.
That's middle income, middle ofthe middle.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
They used to make $7,000, and now they make
$70,000.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
Right.
Okay, in that same period oftime because I know we talked
about these things housingprices have increased about that
same amount.
It's not everything that is thesame and I'm not trying to say
that it is, but the data show usthat this is not the doom and
(48:00):
gloom that many people aretalking about.
Look at the Census Bureauinformation, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics information, theFederal Reserve Bureau of
Economic Analysis In 2023, rightnow.
(48:21):
I was actually looking at the2021 numbers, and the reason for
that is we're often finalizinga couple years backward.
When I talked about thehappiness values, they were
spring 2023.
So they were pretty recent.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
So my question is so you said that from seven to
70,000, right, that's income forthe middle group.
Yes, do we know?
And you said housing hasincreased at that same rate,
about that same rate.
What is that rate?
(48:59):
So that?
Speaker 2 (49:00):
means that if people 20 years ago, or when was your
first date, 60?
Okay, so that would be.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
I'm actually looking 67 to 21.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
What would the relationship of that increase be
to the increase of inflation?
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Inflation over that period of time has averaged
about 3.8% annually.
Okay, but you have to rememberthat inflation is an annual
number, so we don't talk aboutinflation over decades because
(49:37):
it's an annual change.
What we do talk about is theconsumer price index.
Okay, and the consumer priceindex is the market basket of
goods you know.
Assume to be relativelyconstant year to year.
Sure, okay, and that I havedata from 1913.
(50:01):
Okay, okay, to 2023.
Okay, and this is consumerprice index data that comes out
of the Federal Reserve Bureau ofLabor Statistics.
It's all the same.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Which are believable sources.
Speaker 4 (50:16):
Credible sources we're going to use here.
Okay, that is all over theplace in these years.
Sometimes it's as high as 17,18.
I think once it was 21%, andsometimes it has actually fallen
.
Ok, so it's a negative.
(50:36):
Negative couple percent.
Ok, and one year is as bad asyou know negative 10.3.
Ok, so that's, we would callthat deflation, and in many ways
that's more serious thaninflation, you know.
And these averaged, okay, getus to that.
(51:01):
You know, average inflationnumber of 3.8%.
Okay, so my point was just wecould look at years where it was
terrible and years where it waswonderful.
Speaker 3 (51:17):
How has it been the past couple years?
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Okay, so I'm so glad you asked.
So we look at 4% this year, 8%last year, 4% the year before,
1.2%.
The year before that, 1.8%.
The year before that.
The year before that, 1.8.
The year before that, averagingin the twos and threes for a
couple decades.
Speaker 3 (51:40):
So it's been twos and threes.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Went up to eight.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Went up to eight and now it's at four Right.
So this experience that you'refeeling, that young people are
feeling, and eight was last year, wasn't it?
Speaker 4 (51:55):
Or two years ago.
It is a nearness, you'refeeling it because it's so
current and you don't have theinstitutional memory.
You don't have the experientialmemory, and that's some of what
we can do in education.
I don't teach these numbers.
This is not important on itsown, but it's contextual and it
(52:23):
helps to say oh, it's not thedoom and gloom.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
It was worse last year than it is already.
It's better this year.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Let's pause because you're so right about that
sentence.
It just needs the smallest edit.
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Face it.
Speaker 3 (52:32):
Here's what it needs, because for the past is this a
four as well?
So for the past three yearsit's been four and eight and
four.
So the sentence is you're right, it feels it's bad right now,
but it's not doom and gloom.
So you're right to say it's notdoom and gloom in the grand
scheme of things.
Look, it's going to get back towhere it was.
(52:53):
It is this we have thislong-term trend of it's normally
here, but you're right, rightnow it actually is terrible.
That doesn't mean it willcontinue to be terrible and have
hope that it'll come backaround.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
But this year it's half as terrible as it was last
year.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
Sure, but half Sure, but it's still twice as terrible
as it used to be.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
I can play with that again if you'd like.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
No, I like, Don't play with it.
Go ahead.
No, he doesn't want you to Goahead.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
No, that's okay.
That's all right.
Oh, you wanted you were doingthe correction.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
I thought you wanted me to do the correction.
You're fine.
I just I think that's.
And I'm in this weird positionbecause, you know, I must expose
.
I do have hope.
I do have hope for the future.
Speaker 4 (53:38):
I want that on the podcast it will be on there.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
I do have hope for the future.
My hope came from a weird placeand I think maybe at the end of
this entire series I'll explainthat part.
But I do have hope.
So I'm in a weird position ofplaying devil's advocate for the
hopeless, and that is how Ihave rationalized it.
All is to know.
Wait, it feels hopeless becauseit's presenting as hopeless.
(54:07):
It feels hopeless because ifyou take this little slice of
the pie that we have lived, thenit looks hopeless.
It's only when youcontextualize it with it all,
but only yes, you know whenyou're down here.
Speaker 4 (54:26):
Yes, it feels hopeless.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
She's drawing a graph , and you know, and a mountain,
and now we're down in the valley.
Speaker 4 (54:32):
Yeah, and this we recover.
We always recover from this.
Speaker 3 (54:38):
Yes, life is ebbs and flows and while we are, you
know, on the bottom side of thiswave, if you're born within
this bottom side of the wave,things feel hopeless and then it
comes back around.
It's true, it's normally thecase, it's just hard.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
It's just hard.
And it's especially hard whenyou're not sure what you want to
do and if you'll get a jobdoing it.
When you get there and peoplesay there's some jobs that
haven't been invented yet, thatdoesn't help you much, right,
but I'll tell you this.
Right, but I'll tell you thismy two sons, one of whom is just
barely employed for his firstjob, is making more than his
(55:23):
father makes, and he just gotout of college and he's not
nearly as skilled as his father.
And you talk about his oldfather going.
Damn, you know that's hopeless.
No, don't put that in there.
But the point is that hold yourbreath, keep exercising, get
your sleep, eat well, love yourfriends and wake up tomorrow.
(55:47):
Wake up tomorrow, yeah, andwake up tomorrow.
Wake up tomorrow, yeah, andyou've got 20, 40, 50, 60, 70
years of tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (56:01):
At least I won't go into it.
That's a hopeful statement forsome people I know.
I used to really struggle withmental health and the idea of
having 60 more years wasterrifying.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
Yeah, I hear you, I hear you.
Speaker 3 (56:24):
Here's a takeaway I have Because we didn't go as
much into the social media'sinfluence of this as maybe we
could have, because it's where alot of the feeling of doom and
gloom comes from.
A lot of our fear about theeconomy comes from these fear
mongers who are sitting there onyour phone everywhere you look,
(56:44):
saying everything is horrible,the Rome is falling, and all
this kind of stuff so they'llget more, more clicks.
Because it yeah, it sells.
And it's hard because we're inthis weird place of algorithms
are just becoming a thing, andright now it's commonplace for
them to take advantage of yoursubconscious feelings, where
(57:06):
they don't just show you goodthings.
They show you things becausethey know it scares you and
they'll keep popping it up, Evenif you don't want to see it.
They show it things becausethey know it scares you and
they'll keep popping it up, Evenif you don't want to see it.
They show it to you anyway, andso one of the takeaways that I
feel like worth mentioning tellme if I'm wrong.
I would say to students aboutthe economy we're freaking out.
It's hard to look away, butlook away and trust that it's
(57:29):
going to get better and justlive every day economically
smart.
Speaker 2 (57:35):
Keep building your own house, keep building the
bricks in your own education.
Speaker 3 (57:40):
Yeah.
Keep following the things thatinterest you and learn
absolutely better and maybe justlet go of that worry of this
grand state of the economics andtrust that there's very good
reason to believe that thingsare going to get better.
The trend is there that thingsrecover, and so trust in that
(58:01):
trend.
Is that fair to say?
Speaker 4 (58:03):
I think that's fair to say.
And now I'd go a little bitbeyond that to look at what's in
your control and choose to dothe things in your control that
give you hope, and you know whatthey are.
Whatever you and the greateryou out there, the things that
(58:26):
make you happy, the things thatmake you feel worthwhile and
productive and like you'remaking a difference, those
things will empower you.
Speaker 3 (58:38):
And if you haven't found that yet.
Stop what you're doing and findit.
Drop everything and go findthose things that make hard days
a little easier.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
You know, one of the things I talk about the first
couple weeks of class are theseven vectors of student
development.
The first one is developingcompetencies, and then it goes
next to building.
You know, breaking away fromyour family, becoming autonomous
, but then learning how to beinterdependent.
But it also gets down reallygot down up to finding the
(59:12):
things that you value the most,finding what you care about the
most and, ultimately, what areyour values, finding your
integrity.
And, in the midst of all that,you're developing your identity
as well.
And this is the time when youget to do that.
And this is the time when youget to do that.
You know, once you get outthere and you're working away
(59:34):
after you've graduated andyou're trying to get a job,
hopefully a lot of that'salready started to get in place.
So this is a great time to bedoing those things Working on
you, but not in a selfish way.
Working on you so that, whenyou're finished, you're a finer
(59:54):
human being to give more back tothe world and to whom people
want to turn and in whom peoplehave hope.
Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
Cool, I like that.
Something that is verypractical along those lines are
that core courses at theuniversity teach six very
distinct competencies outside ofour content, and they are
(01:00:24):
critical thinking andquantitative analysis, and
communication in oral, writtenand technology forms.
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Cultural knowledge.
Speaker 4 (01:00:35):
Teamwork, social responsibility and personal
responsibility Okay, and thoseare very powerful skills that we
take out of a college educationbeyond content and there are
things you can work on.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
You can change those Right, you can change those.
Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
Yeah, and there's always hope in that.
And focusing on your scope ofinfluence yeah, and a lot of
those things are your ownpersonal finances.
Yep, yep and maybe you have alittle hope if your money's
right you know, let's haveanother podcast about personal
finances, yep, yep.
And maybe you have a littlehope if your money's right, you
know.
Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Yeah, let's have another podcast about personal
finance.
Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
I would love to do that.
That's a whole different.
Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
I love the whole.
You have sunk costs.
That's you know, because a lotof times that's one of the worst
things that young peopleexperience is they make a
mistake and they can't live aday.
Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
Oh, yeah it just.
Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
And and economics tell you it's sunk cost.
Just forget about it.
Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
That's an economics concept.
Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Yeah, I like that.
That could be another episode.
Professor Doty, do you haveanything else?
Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
I don't, but thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
I've enjoyed this.
Thanks for being on Great.
How do you feel?
Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
I feel good, I actually feel hopeful.
But most of all I want you know, over the time of working on
this together, I've become Ithought I understood students
real well, and I want to alwayslearn better about what my
students care about.
And this is something that hastroubled me too is that I don't
want you all to feel hopeless,because I don't feel that hope
(01:02:06):
and yet I get that you do.
So we'll just keep on truckingaway on this.
We'll keep on inviting smartpeople like Professor Doty to
help us think about it Great.
Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Well, here let us end out the episode.
This has been the Ask Dr Rosspodcast.
If you have any questions, youcan always email us at
adrquestions at gmailcom.
Thanks so much for listening.
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