A Costly Education Often Filters Children In The Bottom 50% Out Of A Successful Life
By David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
Talent & Intelligence Are Equally Distributed
The number of smart and talented children born into the poorest 20% of households is about the same as the number of smart and talented children born into the richest 20% of households.
Intelligence and talent are randomly distributed among new-born babies. The janitor’s wife can give birth to a genius and the CEO’s wife can give birth to a moron.
It’s what happens after birth that determines whether that intelligent and talented child has the opportunity of having a successful career or being destined to lapse into poverty and despair.
Education and training is the sieve that separates the successful adult from the unsuccessful one.
As Good Jobs Require More Expensive Education, The Openings In The Success Sieve Become Smaller
Jobs In America In 1850
In 1850 almost all of the good-paying jobs required no more than the ability to read, write, and do simple arithmetic. If you wanted to be a lawyer, teacher, or businessman you didn’t need any special schooling. Abe Lincoln never went to law school. Smart and talented people could apprentice to a professional who was willing to take them under his wing.
In 1850 the openings on the educational sieve were pretty large and most talented and intelligent children could find a way through.
Jobs In America In The 1920s
By the time we entered the twentieth century the sieve had gotten smaller. Entry into professions by apprenticeship had given way to graduate schools, but there were still plenty of jobs, plenty of opportunities for smart, talented people with a high-school education to be successful.
Jobs In America After 2000
But by the time we moved into the twenty-first century all that had changed.
Today, there are few to no professions that you can enter just as an apprentice. Essentially, any halfway decent job requires lengthy and expensive training, and, more importantly, someone has to provide food, housing, clothing, transportation and the like for you for the number of years that the training will require.
Today, you have to have a college degree in order to even apply for most decent jobs.
Today, the openings in the educational sieve that strains the successful job candidates from the unsuccessful ones have gotten very small indeed.
Only 5% Of Doctors Come From The Bottom 20% Of Households
The number of children who have the talent and intelligence to be medical doctors born into households whose wealth is in the bottom 20% is roughly equal to the number of children who have the talent and intelligence to be medical doctors born into households whose wealth is in the top 20%.
BUT, 50% of all new doctors come from households in the top 20% and only 5% of new doctors come from households in the bottom 20%.
An intelligent and talented child born in a household in top 20% has a 1000% better opportunity to become a medical doctor than that same child born in a household in the bottom 20%.
The educational sieve now strains out talented children born to poor families to the such an extent that talented children of poor parents have one-tenth the opportunity to become medical doctors that the equally talented children of rich parents have.
In today’s America, the expense of the education needed to obtain a good job relentlessly filters out talented and intelligent children in the bottom half of our society, thereby consigning them and their children to low-paying jobs and poverty.
Providing Children With Career Opportunities Proportionate To Their Family’s Wealth Creates A Plutocracy
If you wonder why this country is well on its way to becoming a plutocracy you need look no further than the fact that good jobs require years of expensive education and support thus concentrating wealth in families that already have wealth and continuing poverty in families that are already poor.
The huge increase in the wealth gap between the middle of the twentieth century and today for those in the top 20% and the bottom 20% is a glaring reminder of this fact.
How Much The Rich Have Gotten Richer & The Poor Poorer Over The Last 60 Years?
Between the 1960s and the present, the average wealth of the top 10% of households has increased by over 600% while the average wealth of the bottom 10% of households has decreased by over 1000%.
In the period between the early 1980s and the early 2000s the top 20% of households got about 70% richer while the bottom 20% got about 75% poorer.
In 2016 the income gap between the top 10% and the bottom 10% was almost six and a half times greater than the income gap between the top 10% and the bottom 10% was in 1963.
The inability of talented and intelligent children born into families that cannot afford the huge costs to support and educate them for good jobs is increasingly turning this country into a plutocracy where the children in the top 50% have a chance to get a good job while the equally talented children of the bottom 50% are increasingly destined for a life between mediocrity and poverty.
The Republican You’re-On-Your-Own Philosophy Is Toxic To The American Dream
The Republican/Conservative/Libertarian Let-The-Chips-Fall-Where-They-May, Law-Of-The-Jungle, You’re-On-Your-Own philosophy is a wonderful way to create a plutocracy where the rich get increasingly richer and the poor get increasingly poorer.
It’s a terrible way to nourish the American Dream, namely to create a society where talent, intelligence, and the willingness to work provide every citizen with an opportunity for success.
Unless children, irrespective to their families’ wealth, are provided with training equivalent to their talent and unless adults who are willing to work are guaranteed a living-wage job equivalent to their abilities, you cannot have a society where citizens have the opportunity to earn success equivalent to their talent, intelligence and willingness to work.
That American Dream cannot happen in the Republicans’ a Law-Of-The-Jungle, Let-The-Chips-Fall-Where-They-May, You’re-On-Your-Own society.
Instead, those Republican principles create a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer plutocracy, which is exactly what America is becoming today.
— David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
