She Knew the Social Security Formula at 16. Now She's Warning Washington It Won't Save Itself

<p><strong>What does it mean when one of the country&#39;s leading labor economists, a former Obama White House advisor who served as chief economist at the Department of Labor, tells you that Washington&#39;s bet on AI saving Social Security is built on a foundation of wishful thinking, and that the real numbers have been pointing toward crisis since 2017?</strong></p><p>Betsey Stevenson studied physics at Wellesley, switched to economics because the marginal costs were lower, earned her PhD from Harvard, passed up a Michigan faculty offer to work in the private sector, wrote a brand-new job market paper from private sector data to re-enter academia, and eventually landed at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan — where she now teaches, researches, and co-authors a leading economics textbook with her partner Justin Wolfers.</p><p>In this episode, Professor Kotlikoff sits down with Stevenson for a conversation covering the divorce law economics that launched her career, what Title IX actually proved about sports and upward mobility, how two economists navigate a two-career relationship, and a frank assessment of where the US economy is heading under the weight of deficits, AI hype, and a capital income tax structure that may be quietly turning America into a servant economy.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>What You&#39;ll Learn:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>[00:10:39]</strong> Why Betsey passed up academia after Harvard and what working at Forrester Research taught her about big data before big data had a name</li><li><strong>[00:11:00]</strong> The dissertation that launched her career: how unilateral divorce laws changed women&#39;s bargaining power inside marriage without changing the divorce rate at all</li><li><strong>[00:17:00]</strong> The surprising finding: no-fault divorce dramatically reduced spousal violence but also reduced spouses putting each other through school</li><li><strong>[00:22:16]</strong> The Title IX paper: how giving girls access to sports improved graduation rates, college attendance, and adult earnings using a natural experiment almost nobody had thought to use</li><li><strong>[00:36:00]</strong> How Betsey knew the Social Security formula at 16 and why she called it a pure tax on her teenage paycheck</li><li><strong>[00:40:31]</strong> Why the fiscal gap has been unsustainable since Trump&#39;s 2017 tax cuts, and how COVID made it dramatically worse</li><li><strong>[00:42:33]</strong> Why cutting short-