re: #147 freetoken

Because generations of Americans associated a college education with social upward mobility.

Unfortunately (as if often the case) the cause and effect got confused.

I.e., people who went to Harvard didn’t necessarily become rich by being at Harvard, their family was already well placed socially.

Secondly, public education became one of the principal tools for social engineering, e.g., addressing racism. A good sentiment but had an unfortunate side effect of degrading those jobs that didn’t require lots of formal education.

Do you mean to say that having a socially well placed family is the key to upward mobility? Because that’s sort of self contradictory. If your family is socially well placed, by definition the only social mobility open to you is the downward variety.

Upward mobility via education happens when someone with a family background from a lower quintile (say) earns admission to a good university, on merit, earns a degree in a useful and thinly staffed field, on merit, gets a good job in a career that has few qualified applicants because most people just can’t meet the demanding standards of the job, and succeeds in that career because he or she has both the education, and the native wit or talent, to do it well.

This is hardly the only upwardly mobile track. The entrepreneur, if he/she can bring it off, shoots to the top 1 percent or fraction of 1 percent in short order.

The skilled laborer, if his/her work isn’t automated out of existence, or if he/she can adapt as times change, goes to the first (at worst, second) quintile, and that’s usually a step up.