Jacob and Christian speak with Dr. Harris and Dr. Bourgeois about the costs and benefits of privatizing healthcare for all parties. Both experts have spent decades in medicine and understand the ins-and-outs of healthcare.

Colgate University Public Economics Course

Jacob & Christian: Healthcare Weekly: Privatizing Healthcare

Our podcast explores additional costs associated with educating immigrant students, and how compounding affects could lead to excess strain for certain school systems. The choices of families are explored in this podcast, as well as positive and negative externalities exerted by all parties.

Ben & Scott: Economics of Educating Immigrants

This podcast focuses on educational vouchers. It provides a background of what vouchers are and how they came into place. It explores how vouchers influence curriculum and competition amongst schools. It focuses on whether they benefit student achievement or have no impact at all. In order to help answer these questions, two experts are brought in to share their knowledge. One guest is a pro of vouchers and teaches in a state that generously provides them. The second guest specializes in researching vouchers and has seen very little benefits from the system. The two sides of the debate showcase how opinions can drastically differ depending on where one is from.

Alex, Carly & Natalie: Vouchers - A hindrance or a benefit?

Given the current political climate and emergence of presidential candidates touting campaign promises, the policy of free higher education has resurged as a topic of renewed interest. We, as politically involved citizens, want to understand the economic impact of free universal higher education in the United States. Considering that this is a currently debated topic in American politics, it is important to analyze the various components of this extra government provision, such as redistribution, crowd out, research methodology, positive externalities, financing, implementation. From our research and discussion with experts in the field of education economics, we believe that a universal higher education policy could be beneficial for closing socioeconomic gaps in the United States. However, we believe it would be best to invest more into the current systems we have of higher education, rather than a complete overhaul. Our current system works fairly efficiently and is already very progressive, but more could be done to improve education outcomes for all students. Furthermore, the government should be primarily focused on alleviating inequality in K through 12 education which can lead to greater college preparedness and higher college enrollment rates.

Michael, Tommy & Ryan: Dude-o-nomics

Student debt is a serious issue affecting millions of Americans, this podcast delves into the economics surrounding student loans and the role of the government when it comes to student debt. After discussing how the student loan situation managed to become the crisis seen today, we interview a variety of experts in the field and examine some potential solutions to the student debt problem.

Catria & Leanne: Student Loan Debt

This podcast will place an emphasis on the implications of the Raise the Wage Act of 2019 within the greater context of poverty and inequality. The Economic Policy Institute states that this act is intended to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25, which implies that this policy will more than double the minimum wage and have large economic impacts within the domestic marketplace. While we have not yet covered the poverty and inequality section of this course, we believe that the Raise the Wage Act is of the utmost importance and very relevant to other topics we have already reviewed in class. Rather than seeing certain states enforce different minimum wages than others in contemporary society, this act would set an unprecedented standard at the national level. Bearing in mind that the policy is currently under evaluation in Congress, and has not yet been federally mandated, our aim in this podcast is to explore both positive and negative outcomes of the Raise the Wage Act. To facilitate this analysis, we have consulted Professor Sylvia Allegretto, labor economist and co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor Nardos Beyene, Visiting Instructor in Economics at Colgate University.

Alessandro, Charlie & Pomelo: The Raise the Wage Act of 2019

Since its inception, the Earned Income Tax credit, or EITC, has been one of the strongest anti-poverty programs in the United States. A rare welfare program supported by both sides of the aisle, the EITC provides credits to working individuals based on income and family size. While the program was originally targeted at allowing single mothers to enter the workforce, the program has had significant positive effects on all individuals receiving the credit, especially children in these families. Our experts, Professor Nicole Simpson and Chuck Marr, discuss the benefits of the EITC to families and the possibility of any changes upcoming.

2018_Fa Caroline, Maeve & Matt: Pushing Past Poverty

In our podcast we explain how unemployment insurance can cause a moral hazard that leads to dependency and how this causes stigmas and can be perpetuated in the media. We start by defining dependency and explaining the moral hazard that comes with unemployment insurance. Next we interview Professor Kunio Tsuyuhara and he explains his study, which found that an increase in UI negatively correlates with economic growth. Next, we focused on media depictions of dependency, which found that dependency is most often addressed when looking at UI in the media. This may be the cause if racialized and gendered images of welfare recipients. After that, we had another guest who is a Colgate student that grew up in a single mother household. And finally, we examine the pro side of UI by looking at a study which suggests moderate amounts of unemployment insurance actually causes increased productivity and welfare.

2018_Fa Shannon, Danny & Mackenzie: Unemployment Insurance

In this podcast Makayla, Ben, and Adam discuss drug pricing in the pharmaceutical industry. In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. This has not only become a problem for patients, but for prescribers, payers, and policy makers. The pharmaceutical industry is a unique industry because the end user is not normally the one that pays for the prescription drug. Drug pricing in the US is not transparent. With the help of Mike Cropp, President and CEO of Independent Health, and John Rodgers, COO of Independent Health, Makayla, Ben, and Adam explore the reasons why the drug market is skewed, the difficulties of pricing drugs, and potential strategies to counter high prices.

2018_Fa Makayla, Adam & Ben: Healthcare that Cares

Social Security benefits now outweigh the program's income from taxes and interest earned. With the aging baby-boom generation and the increasing life-span of Americans, how can we sustain such a vital retirement program? This podcast explores the different outlooks experts have on the program and the potential solutions to Social Security's depleting reserves.

2018_Fa Michael, Allison & John: The Sustainability of Social Security

This episode is about No Child Left Behind: how it impacted learning, as well as how it succeeded and how it fell short. In it, we interview with two professionals in the field of education. Both Professor Song and Mrs. Spiess discussed the huge role that standardized testing played in the outcomes of NCLB, and how the act ultimately made learning a lot more generalized and more focused on passing the standardized tests, rather than being individualized. There were obviously areas where NCLB succeeded, and Mrs. Spiess explained that there was actually very real financial success associated with NCLB based on the funding received. However, NCLB ultimately fell short in that it failed to provide students with the strong, customizable learning experience that they might have received otherwise because there was so much focus on standardized testing.

2018_Fa Divya, Jenna & Nick: No Child Left Behind - Boondoggle or Brilliant

Our topic will concern the healthcare system of the United States, and more specifically will outline the ways in which the US healthcare system is systematically more expensive than that of other countries. Additionally, we will discuss the healthcare system of the United Kingdom, comparing and contrasting this system of healthcare with that of the US, ultimately offering ways in which the system of US health care can be more effective, and competitively priced compared to abroad healthcare systems.

2018_Sp Zem, Preston, & Zach: Cost Problems With the US Healthcare System

We discuss how legislation worked to manage the financial crisis, specifically focusing on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. We then uncover how this safety net works to fuel moral hazard. Professor Thomas Michl and Leslie Picker join our conversation to further discuss the impact this policy had on the way various entities navigate risk.

2018_Sp Sabrina, Curt & Anders: Bank Bailouts and Moral Hazard

Our podcast looks at the structure of funding public schools, focusing on the state and local level of funding. We talk to experts about if they believe that the current funding in optimal and ask them to suggest solutions that they believe would bring the United States closer to optimal. We also offer what we believe would be better public funding structures than the ones present now.

2018_Sp Liam & Enrique: Models for Public Funding

If Charter Schools do provide better support, what effect does this have on the public schools? If this is not the case, why? We called on two experts Peter Fritzinger, former CFO of DSST (Denver School of Science and Technology), and Professor Song, an Economics professor at Colgate University, to help us answer this question.

2018_Sp Carrie, Austin & Sam: Charter School Choice

This group of podcasts was put together by the students of Colgate University's Public Economics course as a final project.

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Colgate University Public Economics Course

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