Inequality follow-up

Not trying to get too political here, but check this out. Robert Reich, US Secretary of Labor in the 1990’s, discusses the “heart of the economic mess” in this post. He explains that rising labor market inequality – the rising gap between rich and poor – isn’t going to be fixed by tax breaks (to individuals or corporations) or trade protections. Those are short-term fixes to structural economic problems. The only way to change the structure of the economy and solve long-term problems, he says, is to invest in “the productivity of our working people.” Access to good schools, progressive tax policy, clean energy, and rebuilding crumbling infrastructure are the only ways to get out of this mess. It’s your typical Keynesian argument of demand-driven (bottom-up) social reform focused on long-term investments. Interesting and compelling example of how economics intersects with education.

Educational inequality

This chart, from Postsecondary Education Opportunity, is one of the many pieces of data that I look to for inspiration and to help me keep things in perspective. This income inequality follows the same pattern as the class polarization we see in our labor market where there is a wide (and growing) gap between the rich and the poor. Since the late 1970’s and early 80’s, poor kids have been making the slowest gains in college participation.

But what I find to be more compelling (and more worrisome) is found in the chart below from the Education Trust. It comes as no surprise — Kati Haycock shows us that the nation’s “dumbest” rich kids go to college at the same rate as the nation’s “smartest” poor kids. Goes to show how colleges are serving as agents of social stratification and keeping class barriers neatly in tact, rather than acting as agents of social change…something ain’t right here.