Alice Rivlin Spoke About Inclusive Prosperity and the Need for Political Compromise, Vox Declared "Alice Rivlin shaped every major policy debate of the past 40 years"

Alice Rivlin Spoke About Inclusive Prosperity and the Need for Political Compromise; Vox Declared "Alice Rivlin shaped every major policy debate of the past 40 years"

Alice M. Rivlin died on May 14, 2019; the following was originally posted February 11th, 2016 at 3:57 pm

Alice Rivlin and her three childen

In a February 2016 lecture in Thomas Great Hall, Economist Alice M. Rivlin, Bryn Mawr College, Class of ’52 asked “Is Inclusive Prosperity Possible in the US?”

In terms of what sort of policies are needed for inclusive prosperity, Rivlin was optimistic that the US economy remains strong and that enacting or strengthening a few “sensible centric economic policies” would help the country see continued growth while expanding the pool of those benefiting from the growth.

The issue, said Rivlin, who was the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, was whether these policies could ever be translated into law and action.

Alice Rivlin and her three children; photo credit and writer, judyflander.org. The Washington Star, February 25, 1975: Carry Outs Will Be Busy: Mother’s Got a Big New Job

“Our process of setting public policy is so broken that the answer has to be no,” she said.

For the reminder of her talk, Rivlin touched briefly on the policies she sees as important for inclusive prosperity — modernizing infrastructure, investing in science and technology, improving the skills of the future labor force, investing in early childhood education, making the tax system more progressive and more conducive to growth, simplifying regulation, and making government programs work more effectively.

But time and again she returned to the topic of compromise and the need for dialogue rather than debate.

“Dialogue is different than debate. In debate you are trying to win. In a dialogue, you are trying to find common ground and to solve a problem, these are different skills,” she said near the end of her talk.

At one point during her talk, Rivlin talked about the anger of those who have been left behind in recent years as much of the growth has benefited the most wealthy and the fact that both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have tapped into that anger on the campaign trail.

“Anger is not a strategy,” said Rivlin. “If we’re to get back onto a track of inclusive prosperity, we need a president and a congress that recognize the need to work together across party and ideological lines. That’s the hard part, relearning the art of compromise.”

The day following her lecture, Rivlin had breakfast with a group of students at the Wyndham Alumnae House and visited an economics class. (See below for picture taken at Bryn Mawr College)

Rivlin Group

Rivlin was one of the nation's experts in fiscal and monetary policy. She was, among other prestigious posts, Director of the Health Policy Center at the Brookings Institution and Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair in Health Policy. She was a senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and a visiting professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University when this post was created.

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Alice Rivlin Spoke About Inclusive Prosperity and the Need for Political Compromise; Vox Declared "Alice Rivlin shaped every major policy debate of the past 40 years"

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