Income inequality is the public-policy topic of the moment, embraced as an issue across the political spectrum. Since the 1970s, the gap in incomes between those who earn the most and those who earn the least has increased markedly. Some have described this as a “hollowing out” of the middle class and everyone, it seems, agrees it’s a bad thing. But why is it occurring at all? The answer is that the US economy has been undergoing fundamental changes, changes that benefit workers with skills and smarts, but leave behind those with lesser educations.
Jobs today require more education than they once did. According to US Census data, 66 percent of all jobs in 1975 were held by those with high school degrees or less, while just 34 percent required some postsecondary education. By 2012, those figures had almost completely reversed.
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Much of the blame for these changes goes to technology: Many lower-skilled jobs have disappeared, replaced by machines, while at the same time those with higher levels of education are able to command better salaries because technology (such as computers) allows them to be more productive.
And the solution? Nothing that’s easy. There are doubtless some who wish we could re-wind the clock and bring back the good old days when a high school education was all a worker needed to provide for a family. That won’t happen. Others place the blame on companies for “shipping jobs overseas.” Most of those, however, are jobs the United States really doesn’t want: Low-wage and long-hour work that, even if returned to our shores, wouldn’t bring back a robust middle class. (Indeed, because they pay so little, they might exacerbate the divide.)
I'm sorry, readers, but I'm just tired of conventional myths and $elf-$erving rationales behind the agenda-pu$hing advancement. So $orry.
A better approach, perhaps, is simply to insist that lower-paying jobs pay more....
Related: Quick Bite of the Boston Globe
Alternatively, we might tax more heavily those with high incomes and turn around and give it to those towards the bottom. Such redistributionist schemes have never been popular in the United States, however, and it’s hard to see enthusiasm for them building. Still, a variant of that — funding the cost of college educations for middle-class folks — might catch on.
That last thought leads us to education. As should be evident, if educated people do better in today’s economy, then the answer is to get more people educated. It’s not a quick fix, unfortunately, and in a world where politics demands instant results, it’s bound to disappoint. Yet in the long run, it’s the only way to keep America the land of opportunity.
I'm $ick of the $cam, sorry.
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