David Brooks sees two kinds of inequality in the United States.
In his New York Times column earlier this week, he assigned them colors, apparently corresponding to the political leanings of the people who obsess about them.
"Blue Inequality," he says, is all about income and wealth – the 1% who are well-off and the 99% who aren’t so much. "Red Inequality" is all about education – those who have college degrees and those who are less well-educated.
Brooks concedes that both camps have reason for their respective concerns. Incomes have been steadily increasing for the lucky 1%, while their poorer cousins are stuck where they were five or six years ago. And people with a college degree are not only more likely to get better-paying jobs, they’re also more likely to marry, have kids, stay married, and lead more fulfilling lives.
While conceding that incomes matter, Brooks maintains that the education gap is what we should really worry about. After all, money isn’t everything and, even if it were, a good education is the surest path to accumulating more of it. More importantly, well-educated people have larger social networks and are generally more engaged in civic life.
I know Brooks’ thinking well enough to know that his argument isn’t a clever ploy to deflect attention away from concerns about income inequality. He’s not a died in the wool proponent of trickle-down economics and laissez-faire capitalism. He’s willing to pay his fare share towards the common good. But he exhibits a surprisingly myopic view of people with "Blue" tinted political leanings.
Brooks concedes that income and education inequality are linked. But I think he may be underestimating how closely intertwined they are.
First of all, few would question that a good education pays for itself over time. BusinessWeek estimates the annualized net return on a college degree ranges from 12% at MIT to 4% at Black Hills State University in South Dakota.
But college has become an increasingly expensive investment. One study shows that tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007, while median family incomes rose only 147%. The cost of attending a four-year public college consumes 28% of the median family income; at a private university, it would eat up 76%.
So the middle class has been financing college educations through debt, the same way it has been paying for everything else. According to one recent study, the average graduate leaves college with about $34,000 in loans to pay off.
Some experts worry that a college education may soon be out of reach for many middle class families. It's already a bridge too far for most lower income kids.
So while there’s a strong correlation between education and a host of social ills – from out of wedlock births to smoking – there’s also a significant income component. That's part of Occupy Wall Street's message.
On this issue, Brooks is uncharacteristically color-blind. We don’t have Red and Blue shades of inequality. It’s more like a single strain of Purple.
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