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The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist
Knowledge Isn’t Power
Regular
readers know that I sometimes mock “very serious people” — politicians
and pundits who solemnly repeat conventional wisdom that sounds
tough-minded and realistic. The trouble is that sounding serious and
being serious are by no means the same thing, and some of those
seemingly tough-minded positions are actually ways to dodge the truly
hard issues.
The
prime example of recent years was, of course, Bowles-Simpsonism — the
diversion of elite discourse away from the ongoing tragedy of high
unemployment and into the supposedly crucial issue of how, exactly, we
will pay for social insurance programs a couple of decades from now.
That particular obsession, I’m happy to say, seems to be on the wane.
But my sense is that there’s a new form of issue-dodging packaged as
seriousness on the rise. This time, the evasion involves trying to
divert our national discourse about inequality into a discussion of
alleged problems with education.
And
the reason this is an evasion is that whatever serious people may want
to believe, soaring inequality isn’t about education; it’s about power.
Just
to be clear: I’m in favor of better education. Education is a friend of
mine. And it should be available and affordable for all. But what I
keep seeing is people insisting that educational failings are at the
root of still-weak job creation, stagnating wages and rising inequality.
This sounds serious and thoughtful. But it’s actually a view very much
at odds with the evidence, not to mention a way to hide from the real,
unavoidably partisan debate.
The
education-centric story of our problems runs like this: We live in a
period of unprecedented technological change, and too many American
workers lack the skills to cope with that change. This “skills gap” is
holding back growth, because businesses can’t find the workers they
need. It also feeds inequality, as wages soar for workers with the right
skills but stagnate or decline for the less educated. So what we need
is more and better education.
My guess is that this sounds familiar — it’s what you hear from the talking heads on Sunday morning TV, in opinion articles from business leaders like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, in “framing papers” from the Brookings Institution’s centrist Hamilton Project. It’s repeated so widely that many people probably assume it’s unquestionably true. But it isn’t.
For
one thing, is the pace of technological change really that fast? “We
wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” the venture
capitalist Peter Thiel has snarked. Productivity growth, which surged briefly after 1995, seems to have slowed sharply.
Furthermore,
there’s no evidence that a skills gap is holding back employment.
After
all, if businesses were desperate for workers with certain skills, they
would presumably be offering premium wages to attract such workers. So
where are these fortunate professions?
You can find some examples here
and there. Interestingly, some of the biggest recent wage gains are for
skilled manual labor — sewing machine operators, boilermakers
— as some manufacturing production moves back to America. But the
notion that highly skilled workers are generally in demand is just
false.
Finally,
while the education/inequality story may once have seemed plausible, it
hasn’t tracked reality for a long time. “The wages of the
highest-skilled and highest-paid individuals have continued to increase
steadily,” the Hamilton Project says. Actually, the inflation-adjusted earnings of highly educated Americans have gone nowhere since the late 1990s.
So what is really going on? Corporate profits have soared as a share of national income, but there is no sign of a rise in the rate of return on investment.
How is that possible? Well, it’s what you would expect if rising
profits reflect monopoly power rather than returns to capital.
As
for wages and salaries, never mind college degrees — all the big gains
are going to a tiny group of individuals holding strategic positions in
corporate suites or astride the crossroads of finance. Rising inequality
isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power.
Now,
there’s a lot we could do to redress this inequality of power. We could
levy higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and invest the
proceeds in programs that help working families. We could raise the
minimum wage and make it easier for workers to organize. It’s not hard
to imagine a truly serious effort to make America less unequal.
But
given the determination of one major party to move policy in exactly
the opposite direction, advocating such an effort makes you sound
partisan. Hence the desire to see the whole thing as an education
problem instead. But we should recognize that popular evasion for what
it is: a deeply unserious fantasy.
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