It ain’t super sexy, but on the heels of reports that inequality has now reached a post-World War II high; and with Bush reciting the familiar mantra of education, education, education; absolutely everyone should read TAP‘s lead story today, where Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein brutally debunk the idea that accelerating inequality is a product of higher returns to education, and that a fix can be found in the schools. The whole education trope is a way of justifying inequality — after all, if it’s education, that means it’s virtuous — and offering a solution which both won’t address the problem and can’t really be implemented. Nobody has any idea how you’d reform the schools such that inequality would calm. What we do know how to do is use redistribution to address the problem. And that’s what Bush, and so many others, are trying to head off. In the meantime, though, read the piece.
–Ezra Klein
