For the last 30 years saving and investing has been the road to gain. Makes you wonder if a take the money over the schooling strategy would have worked better for the less gifted students. Many students just fill a desk for years anyway, at a cost of 6k to 12k a year. How about if they had been given capital (money, tools etc.) and apprentiship instead from age 12 or so? (I have a hunch that a dropout with his own bulldozer can make more money than a high school grad without).

Of course modern man would gaps at such a radical idea. OK start throwing the stones.

We've built an economy where the riches go not to those with the most knowledge, but the most money.

Have you ever thought about how that is?

IMO one reason is that we have been in a period of decelerating inflation and so the return to capital has been higher than otherwise would be.
Another reason in that we save less.
Another reason is mechanization.
Another reason is globalization (BTW Americans and Europeans, already rich, may not have not gained as much you want over the last 15 years but the people in China, India, the old eastern block and the Asian tigers have made amazing gains and that is good, very good ).

"We've built an economy where the riches go not to those with the most knowledge, but the most money."

Jeeze. You make it sound like a bad thing.

Additionally, it cuts powerfully against the comforting story some tell themselves about inequality, which is that it's skills-based and simply a reflection of educational differences in our grand polity.

I'm not sure that is true. It seems very likely that it is skill-based, but unfortunately for many, those skills come in post-graduate degrees. In other words, the goal posts in the global economy have moved-- whereas a college education used to be sufficient to get ahead, in a competitive environment where more global workers have similar credentials, it now takes post-graduate degree/expertise to fit that bill. If you posted the hourly wages of people with post-graduate degrees in the US, my suspicion is that wages have in fact been increasing.

I really don't like those distorted graphs that seem to show much bigger differences than actually exist. If we look at the numbers, we see that college graduates make less than 3k more than less educated workers, on average. What should be considered, too, are that college grads get later into a job, and then eventually have to overcome the burden of any loans they needed to pay for their education. It would be interesting to see projected lifetime earnings compared, and I guess this would show even less of an advantage nowadays. Looks like even good qualifications don't give you a high chance at a comfy middle class way of life anymore.

Maybe the the impact of a college degree has been distorted. A good, skilled tradesman can make a very decent living, and a lot of jobs that now require college degrees could be handled by people with a decent high school education. If you push degree requirements into lower wage jobs, it seems like the value of a college degree would drop.

Its great that the column spent a lot of time examining differences between men and women. But, considering the Kanye West hook, would it be too much to ask that he look at the differences that exist between blacks and whites in the labor market? I mean, I expect that black men (or Latino men) have a fundamentally different experience than white men, and from black women or white women. To lump it all together is to overlook greater disparities. And, again considering the Kanye hook, it ignores a pretty big part of his whole schtick.

Additionally, it cuts powerfully against the comforting story some tell themselves about inequality, which is that it's skills-based and simply a reflection of educational differences in our grand polity.

It has more to do with wisdom. The reason to allow the wisdom and the clever to keep more is because they will generally use it more effectively, hopefully in the long run this will make us all better off. Also it keep helps with insentives.

Gee, if college degrees don't matter, why is it almost every job worth having requires one? Why is it the wealthy always make sure their kids get into college? Why is it they refuse to build more colleges, lower tuition, and let everyone in?

I think it's pretty obvious that they do matter, and that some of the elite are going to great lengths to preserve their privilege by trying to convince other people that they don't.

Floccina, I'd suggest you learn to actually live on what most people have ot actually live on before you start extolling other people to 'save'. They haven't seen their wages increases beyond inflation for over 30 years, so stop pretending it's all the poor peoples fault.

Soullite for a long time I and my family of 4 lived on 15K/year because it was that I was very confident that I could always earn. Now we live on about 40K/year but I could back to 15k if the need arose.

BTW that 40K/year includes 7K to keep my kids in private schools and an individual Health insurance policy. Take a look at the book "Your Money or Your Life".

I think another interesting piece of the puzzle is here (pdf):

==
Demand growth for college workers appears to have slowed in the 1990s, as indicated by
the negative coefficient on the trend interacted with 1992. Given the rapid spread of information
technology and work-place reorganization in the 1990s and beyond, this finding would appear to
be at odds with the skill-biased technological change explanation. But a resolution exists. As the college educated group became a larger share of the labor force, it also became more
heterogeneous. Demand for those who graduated from more selective institutions as well as
those with post-B.A. degrees is still soaring and they are doing spectacularly well. But demand
for the remaining group is less strong and they are not doing as well. (15-16)
==

Only so many spaces on the upper-middle class game of musical chairs?