In fact, the income differentials understate the chasm between college and high school grads. In the 1970s, high school and college grads had very similar family structures. Today, college grads are much more likely to get married, they are much less likely to get divorced and they are much, much less likely to have a child out of wedlock.
Yes, and college grads are far more likely to have expensive lawnmowers and the ability to hit a two-iron. What in the hell is your point here? The life of an unemployed mechanic in Macon is not unequal to that of an unemployed recent graduate of the University of Georgia, where no unapproved fornicating occurs. That kid is going to come home with his degree and talk to his old high-school football tight end, the mechanic, and they’re both going to be angry because there is no work because, and I know I’m repeating myself here, nobody has any fking money anymore.
But, ah, you might say, what we have here is a great argument for vastly increasing and simplifying federal student loans, and for forgiving student debt, because what passes for data in this column clearly indicates that a college degree is critical to avoiding certain social pathologies that are at the root of our genuine inequality, and not the fact that nobody has any fking money anymore. No, you probably guessed by now, Your Honor, it’s values again. And, of course, not those values that we hoped our financial barons would have that would make them realize that stealing everything that isn’t nailed down is not good for America. Nope, it’s all those poor people humping again:
That’s because the protesters and media people who cover them tend to live in or near the big cities, where the top 1 percent is so evident. That’s because the liberal arts majors like to express their disdain for the shallow business and finance majors who make all the money. That’s because it is easier to talk about the inequality of stock options than it is to talk about inequalities of family structure, child rearing patterns and educational attainment. That’s because many people are wedded to the notion that our problems are caused by an oppressive privileged class that perpetually keeps its boot stomped on the neck of the common man.
But the fact is that Red Inequality is much more important. The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it’s not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the nation’s stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent.
Those two paragraphs alone, Your Honor, represent the rest of the American people’s prima facie against Our Mr. Books on the charges before the bar. There’s the sneering at “liberal arts majors” from a guy with a degree in History from the University of Chicago. There’s the usual wheedling nonsense about family structure and “stagnant human capital,” as Brooks tosses out tinpot sociology like a dime to a beggar on a steam grate. We do have an oppressive privileged class. (Brooks should look around his dinner table some time.) For three decades, as the Congressional Budget Office reported last week, most of the wealth of this country flowed upwards into it. Over the past decade, that privileged class, without a peep from people like David Brooks, turned the American economy into a dog track, and it didn’t matter a damn whether you went to college or didn’t go to college, or whether you were having babies “out of wedlock” (Jesus, what a priss) or not. That privileged class enriched itself and to hell with the rest of us. “Disorganized social fabric”? Holy hell, people are just trying to keep from getting tossed out into the street and all he’s got by way of an explanation is that too many people are getting knocked up and too few are going to college, even though we all woke up sometime in the autumn of 2008 and discovered that nobody had any fking money anymore.
David Brooks not our favorite pundit
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—- we all woke up sometime in the autumn of 2008 and discovered that nobody had any fking money anymore.—-
not true, according to UniChic economists.
we all have money, but the invisible hand put it in a some other guy’s pocket.