Education: Fulfillment of "The Epiphany"
My four years as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin (Madison, pictured at right) were a marvelous, eye-opening experience. I was ready for college and hit the books hard. I also had an enjoyable social life, joining Alpha Gamma Rho, an agricultural-social fraternity. It helped that most students were seventeen or eighteen and fresh out of high school, while I was twenty-one and fresh out of the Corps. As a vet, I was spared zero-credit required physical education and ROTC, which was required at the time—unless you were a vet. I truly felt privileged.

Upon taking my first economics course, and my first agricultural economics course as a sophomore, I found economics to be very interesting and decided to major in agricultural economics. Maybe it was because I always wondered why farmers had to work so hard to produce stuff that brought such low prices. And maybe it helped that I’m of Swiss descent—-we Swiss tend to gravitate toward things economic. I contend that it’s in the genes. Only the frugal and economically aware could survive in a land of few natural resources and reproduce their own gene set.

In my junior year, with the encouragement of my professors, I indicated interest in graduate school. My advisor suggested that I should consider the U. of California at Berkeley where he had obtained his Ph.D. Hey, if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me. From then on, I set my sights for UC Berkeley (pictured at left.)

I took a circuitous route to Berkeley by way of a M.S. degree from the U. of Arizona, Tucson. It was during that era with JFK as president, the U. of Minnesota’s Walter Heller as Chair of JFK’s Council of Economic Advisors, and the economy on an upward trend that I became enamored with the confluence of economics, politics, and public policy. Intelligently executed economic policy could improve the well being of people, I was convinced. And it took the right kind of politics and politicians to bring it about.

Yes-—the right kind of politicians to formulate intelligent policies. I had always been a Democrat although I probably couldn’t articulate just why—other than they seemed to be more far-sighted and push for what would help the average citizen. With JFK and the nation moving ahead, that cemented it. I would be a life-long Democrat.

Click on a chapter title to read more...
Growing Up in Green County
From Farm Boy to Marine
Education: Fulfillment of "The Epiphany"
Influences of the 1960s
My Career: University of Minnesota
My Career: New Mexico State University & Sultan Qaboos University in Oman
Bush's War in the Middle East
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