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.
.. 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.
Let’s Not Mention Inequality
Inequality does not appear to be an issue that moves voters, and even if it did, Republicans would not be able to come up with an agenda that does much to reduce it.
.. The Democratic drive to increase tax rates on very high earners and on investment income may or may not be wise, but it would probably reduce inequality. The same cannot be said of Republican proposals.
The Supreme Court’s Billion-Dollar Mistake
According to the Brennan Center report, over the five years since these decisions, super PACs have spent more than one billion dollars on federal election campaigns. And because these organizations are free of any limits, they have proved to be magnets for those who have the resources to spend lavishly to further their interests. About 60 percent of that billion dollars has come from just 195 people.
Romney: God and the G.O.P.
In his R.N.C. speech, Romney mentioned his pastoral work “with people who are very poor, to get them help and subsistence,” and he said that Republicans had to position themselves as opponents of inequality if they were to win the White House. He may be right, but it will be hard for the G.O.P. to shake the sense that Romney was being more true to his party’s principles three years ago when he said, of the so-called forty-seven per cent, “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” This is a Republican dilemma, not a Mormon one.