Andy Stern guest lecture highlights need for U.S. leadership

“In the most fundamental moment of change in the history of the world, Team America has no coach and no plan.”

This was the main issue that Andy Stern, former president of Service Employees International Union and Penn alumnus, discussed at a guest lecture in Huntsman Hall Wednesday. More than thirty students came to hear his ideas on the national economy, Medicare and the budget deficit.

“I know he is a right-hand man to President Obama,” said first-year master’s of business administration student Anders Meyerhoff, explaining why he decided to attend.

Stern himself touched on his frequent visits to the White House. After wanting to run a New England chicken farm back in the day, he has gone on to become a member of the President’s deficit commission.

Several factors led to the creation of the commission, he said. These factors include a lack of wage growth from low white-collar level down, “not … a single new net job since 1999” and growing public disapproval of outsourcing white-collar jobs abroad.

Stern said the commission has until Dec. 1 to suggest improvements to discretionary spending, tax policy and Medicare, among others. Stern emphasized that it’s time to make hard choices.

“You can’t run your life with too much debt,” he said. For starters, he suggested developing the clean energy economy, changing corporate tax and capping expenditure on Medicare.

For Stern, a problem with the American system is good intentions without leadership. Stern believes that a cultural problem also exists, as people here have a better sense of individual rights than the common good.

“Everyone who has interests has tunnel vision — leadership needs peripheral vision,” he explained. Stern’s vision of the country is still optimistic — he holds that America can be the greatest country in the world if it harnesses its incredible resources.

After the lecture, about 10 students circled Stern for follow-up.

Such speakers are “a win to the school,” said organizer Peter Cappelli, a professor of Management at the Wharton School.

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