Faced with data showing a long-term decline in wages alongside rising inequality and "deaths of despair," apologists for the status quo tend to rely on several arguments to explain away the problem. None of them withstands scrutiny.
PRINCETON – A great failure of contemporary American capitalism is that it is not serving everyone. The educated minority – the one-third of the adult population with a four-year college degree – has prospered, but the majority has lost out, not just relatively but absolutely. The facts are increasingly clear and hard to ignore. Less-educated Americans’ prospects are getting worse: they are losing materially, they are enduring more pain and social isolation, and their lives are getting shorter.
PRINCETON – A great failure of contemporary American capitalism is that it is not serving everyone. The educated minority – the one-third of the adult population with a four-year college degree – has prospered, but the majority has lost out, not just relatively but absolutely. The facts are increasingly clear and hard to ignore. Less-educated Americans’ prospects are getting worse: they are losing materially, they are enduring more pain and social isolation, and their lives are getting shorter.