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The Rise and Rise of the Cognitive Elite
hessian writes "As technology advances, the rewards to cleverness increase. Computers have hugely increased the availability of information, raising the demand for those sharp enough to make sense of it. In 1991 the average wage for a male American worker with a bachelor's degree was 2.5 times that of a high-school drop-out; now the ratio is 3. Cognitive skills are at a premium, and they are unevenly distributed."
The dirty little secret of modern America is that a significant amount of the college graduates we have today would, in a saner economy, be the semi-skilled manufacturing labor force competing with third world labor. Most college graduates have actually fewer skills after 4-5 years of college than most high school graduates who do something more complicated than retail or food service.
The problem is that you can't say that mos college graduates should actually be working in a factory straight after high school because that implies the following:
1) You hate the poor (how liberals will see it)
2) You're an elitist (how many conservatives will see it)
3) You want to deny the American Dream(tm) to millions (how the non-ideological will see it)
4) You don't believe everyone's kid is above average.
5) You believe college should be the domain of the intelligent and elite, not the average man on the street.
Yet here's the thing. A key part of why we are so in debt is because every Tom, Dick and Harry believes that they are entitled to a standard that is "upper-middle class" by world standards... just for showing up on the job. Our national problems could be solved if we'd admit that a stratified society is not only natural, but healthy (which is not the same as saying that 1% should control 90% of the wealth, that's another argument).
The reason the standard of living for the common man rose so rapidly from the 19th century to later 20th century is that we had the gold standard, which secured the value of their labor on one end, and we didn't indulge in ridiculous social engineering to make everyone equal. Now, we have nearly $1T in non-dischargeable student loan debt and no future for many millions of Americans. Instead of more of the same, how about we repeal NAFTA and go back to a sound currency so we can rebuild our manufacturing base and stop forcing square pegs (the average worker) into a round hole (advanced education and the work that it should support).