Shortly after pandemic-era travel restrictions eased, I flew to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with leaders from left-leaning foundations. The topic was close to my heart: combating inequality and constructing a new narrative about reversing huge and widening income disparities. I expected the focus to be on the jarring increase in earnings inequality over the last four decades, led by the declining wages of workers, and especially men, without college degrees.

To my surprise, nobody seemed to comment on the stagnation and decline in the wages of non-college workers. Nor was there any discussion of how inequality between residents of small cities and large metropolitan areas had surged. Instead, commentator after commentator talked about gender inequality, racial inequality, and inequality affecting sexual minorities. These are all important topics, of course, but if our aim was to understand the surge in inequality at the aggregate level, much of the story was about jobs and opportunities for Americans without college education.

  • CombatWombat@feddit.onlineEnglish
    3·
    1 month ago

    I don’t really vibe with the thesis of this article, but it does confirm my bias that if you want to talk to strangers, following a sport is the easiest way

    As I was traveling back to Boston, another event crystallized my unease about American political trends. Seeing that my flight was delayed by an hour, I decided to get a drink. At the bar by my gate, the only opening was next to a burly gentleman around my age. As I ordered a beer, he asked me whether my flight was also delayed. I nodded ruefully and said it wasn’t too bad. He proceeded to talk about football, a topic I know little about. But I welcomed the distraction, and over the next hour, we broached several other topics: the annoyances of air travel, beer, the challenges of the small business he was running, politics, and basketball, about which I knew a little more than football.

    It was only later that I realized how rare such an event had become, where I spoke to somebody with a very different education profile, occupation, and interests from mine. This made me consider what would have happened if, on my other side at the bar, there had been somebody with a Ph.D. and an occupation similar to mine (academic, financier, consultant, lawyer, etc.). Whom would I have chosen to initiate a conversation with? Whom would the participants in the workshop I attended have chosen? The answer seemed almost too obvious, and not completely unrelated to why the plight of manual workers was less than top of mind for many college-educated policymakers, activists, and civil servants.

    • Corvidae@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      1 month ago

      The MAGA movement is something like 2/3 or 3/4 non-college educated. The danger is that if democrats don’t address their concerns, the non-college educated may continue to vote in ways that bring all of us down.

      • CombatWombat@feddit.onlineEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        I strongly believe you should talk to conservatives. I resent the framing that the problem is people who get college educations being dismissive of people without because they’re ignorant, when by and large what I actually see is those who didn’t attend college being dismissive of those of us who did because we’ve been brainwashed.