Demanding a federal budget that is fair, responsible, and meets our nation's priorities

Monday, October 15, 2007

It's Not the Education, Stupid

Writing in The American Prospect, Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein disabuse readers of the notion that rising inequality can be reversed by improving the educational system. In fact, as the title of their piece - "Schools as Scapegoats" - indicates, the school system is being scapegoated by politicians and economists who refuse to believe that interventions in the private market may be required to reverse the inequality trend.

The honesty of our capital markets, the accountability of our corporations, our fiscal-policy and currency management, our national investment in R&D and infrastructure, and the fair-play of the trading system (or its absence), also influence whether the U.S. economy reaps the gains of Americans' diligence and ingenuity. The singular obsession with schools deflects political attention from policy failures in those other realms.

If you're interested in inequality issues, this is a must-read article.

Below the fold is the nickel version of the piece.

• The roaring 90s saw a brief reverse in the inequality trend, yet no one credited the educational system for the widely shared economic gains during that era.



• Education can close the gap between ethnic groups, but a worker's skills have little control over policies guiding various distribution mechanisms including "tax, regulatory, trade, monetary, technology, and labor-market policies that modify the market forces affecting how much workers will be paid."



• While wages for all college-educated workers have increased in the past few decades, these college grads have not shared equally in the economic gains made in that time period.



• In a report that blames the education for increasing inequality, the authors point out that college grads are actually over-supplied in the market, as more and more are being forced to take jobs that require only a high-school diploma.



• High rates of unionization in the manufacturing sector enabled lower-skilled workers to enjoy middle-class lifestyles. Today's hotel workers, on the other hand, are unionized at much lower rates, resulting in lower pay and fewer benefits.



• "The wage gap between college- and high school—educated workers was flat from 2001 to 2005. However, inequality surged in this period, a fact that can't be explained by something that didn't change!"