Education
Altmeyer was born in DePere, Wisconsin on May 8, 1891, and developed an early interest in social security while working as an office boy in his uncle's law office. For a while he was a public school teacher and school principal and also attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating with a B.A. in 1914. In 1918, he re-entered the University as a graduate student, where he studied with John R. Commons, one of a handful of American economists versed in social insurance who was actively interested in workers' compensation, unemployment insurance and health insurance. Altmeyer became interested in social and labor policies when he learned about Commons' role as the principal author of Wisconsin's workmen's compensation program, which was then the only one in the United States. They and others at Wisconsin were proponents of the progressive, liberal social policy of a positive and vigorous role for government. In 1918, Altmeyer became Commons' graduate research assistant. Together they co-authored a report on "The Health Insurance Movement in the United States" for the Illinois Health Insurance Commission and the Ohio Health and Old Age Insurance Commission. Altmeyer was also working for the Wisconsin State Tax Commission and the Wisconsin Industrial Commission, while working on his M.A. which was granted in 1921, and his PhD in economics, which was granted in 1931.
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Famous quotes containing the word education:
“It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)