With the 2012 elections looming, a Washington University professor says increasing partisanship is impeding the government from finding a lasting solution to existing problems.

My uncle once quoted to me, “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re 30, you have no brain.” A conservative, he is probably patiently waiting for naïve liberal me to start griping about the government stealing my money. It is undoubtedly easier to accept paying taxes when they remain an abstract concept.

Christina Romer, former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, served as the keynote speaker at Washington University’s Livable Lives Initiative’s first public event.

A recent release of 2010 census data showed that the population in St. Louis City had decreased by about 8 percent over the past decade. The figures indicate a total population of 319,294 people, a near 30,000 person decrease from the 2000 census and a reduction by more than half since the 1950s.

Amid the heated rhetoric by both sides of the protests in Wisconsin, it’d be easy to miss the bipartisanship taking place in Washington that President Obama called for in his State of the Union Address.

President Obama on Tuesday pushed for widespread improvements to the nation’s education system in laying out his vision for improving the country’s future and keeping the economy competitive with growing global powers.

The Fed has recently come under intense scrutiny after it was pressured to release documents detailing where the $3.3 trillion it issued in loans went.

The economy is in all sorts of trouble; some experts believe it’s in a recession, some say a depression, and every now and then you’ll hear some clown say that it’s just fine.

“When you give a teenager a credit card with no supervision, they max the debt,” economics professor Costas Azariadis said. “That’s what Greece did.” Azariadis believes that Greece is in a terrible financial position and needs to make large changes to overcome its economic woes.

With 6144 students, the undergraduate population of Wash. U. represents a sizable voting block with the ability to influence electoral outcomes in the surrounding legislative districts and statewide.