
Educated Fools - wonderment
https://newrepublic.com/article/156000/educated-fools-democrats-misunderstand-politics-social-class
======
wonderment
I know it's maybe too political for HN but I found this article more
interesting than expected.

Its main idea is "the loss of social standing, social claims, the social
assets that working people used to have, because, in our time, education is so
much more decisive".

~~~
jxramos
The authors point about having little meaningful intersection with the bulk of
society's high school educated masses reminded me of David Brooks old piece:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-
ruinin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruining-
america.html)

He details joining a friend of his with a high school education to lunch. He
soon recognizes that they jumped a guardrail of sorts in how she was baffled
by this fancy world created by elites caught in the microcosm of a gourmet
Italian sandwich shop. He reads into the encounter pretty deeply, but backs up
a bunch of other elite practices that make elite culture out of reach. It's a
pretty interesting read.

Pretty shocking to read this Educated Fools piece where the author basically
admits to what are more commonly called unintended consequences.

The authors bit about Trump embracing the poorly educated is interesting. It
jibes with something I read once but can't find the source at the moment. It
had something to do with his frequent dealings with construction workers and
going out to speak and meet the people crafting his buildings. He as a
developer supposedly developed a rapport and respect from those working class
folks. Also being a landlord in his early days dealing with poor folk. I think
I heard about that in this Japanese documentary bit
[https://youtu.be/rwNTjlEpJD0?t=443](https://youtu.be/rwNTjlEpJD0?t=443). Kind
of interesting to see a Japanese perspective on the guy and how they craft
stories. His crazy dealings with professional wrestling too and all that gaudy
raucousness also intersects with that other class of people. Seems like its
not a recent foray for him, he's been engaging with folks in other classes for
sometime by the looks of it. That's probably something that went unnoticed for
a long time till folks started to scrutinize what the heck happened.

------
krnsll
Thanks for sharing this. The piece makes an urgent point that needs to be
appropriately acknowledged. It falls in the vein of arguments I've come to
term as "relational poverty" or "relational inequality" arguments (what Popper
is presented as terming "moral inequality" in the piece) that most social
science research I've come across has failed to or is ill-equipped to account
for. I do recall Amartya Sen making a definition of poverty along these
grounds (in the sense of dignity, or lack thereof, in what one perceives as
their social environment) some years back but haven't been able to trace it
down since or see if any further work was done on it. (If someone reading this
happens to know more about such work, I'd appreciate being directed towards
it).

The point made about Trump expressing a liking for poorly educated folk is
also noteworthy. Even if the more sensible in the political class come to
acknowledge the paradox we face, the matter of articulating and expressing it
appropriately arises. Currently, as the author notes, the "college for all"
approach doesn't appear to be resonating electorally (that said, there are a
number of confounding factors one could put forth) but rather is serving as a
reminder to the once robust (perhaps this is romantic nostalgia) working- and
lower-middle-classes of their lowered social standing and relational dignity.

Update: I have found a presentation of the relativistic perspective on poverty
by Sen (1983). Apologies for the earlier bit, that was laziness on my part.
Worth a read.

[https://are.berkeley.edu/courses/ARE251/fall2008/Papers/sen8...](https://are.berkeley.edu/courses/ARE251/fall2008/Papers/sen83.pdf)

~~~
claudiawerner
Sen's work is closely associated with philosophical and economic concerns
about exploitation, not just poverty, and I think it's a shame that's missed
out on. J.E. Roemer was the main theorist of post-Marxian theories of
exploitation, but I've observed that when the discussion centers around
poverty rather than exploitation, the resulting theory is much more tame. Also
related is capability theory and the various objections to purely negative
liberty (something I've also noticed many people miss out on - to speak of
liberty as if it is strictly a concept that belongs to the liberal tradition
and no other tradition may use it, and to then claim that the only real kind
of liberty is negative liberty).

Poverty is the kind of thing you can fix within the current system, or at
least make attempts to alleviate. Exploitation and domination are not, which
is why you will never hear an elected official talk about it as a systematic
issue inherent to the current system - if they knew about the literature on
the topic, they'd know they're powerless to do anything about it.

------
IIAOPSW
I'm going to break slightly with the authors opinion here and say we do solve
every problem with "be more like us" but that doesn't always mean college.
Other solutions involve "why don't you just move", better mass transit / fewer
cars, some form of retraining (not college per se) etc. There's a whole basket
of diverging "elite" values such that even if they stopped telling people to
go to college tomorrow they would still be despised by the working class.

Maybe I am being one of those dastardly, snobbish, grating coastal elites. But
if you don't like me and my solutions, what else is there? There is literally
nothing I could suggest to help the lower class which can't be construed as
"just be more like me".

~~~
tacitusarc
Part of the problem is the suggestion that they need help in the first place.
So what Joe the garbage truck driver didn't go to college? So what he has a
small house in a kinda shitty neighborhood? Maybe he's doing the best he can
and maybe he actually has a pretty happy life. The working class doesn't need
pity and suggestions to move or go get a degree. Here's something novel: why
are the roads in nice neighborhoods always better repaired than roads in poor
neighborhoods? Instead of telling the working class to move or get college
degrees, maybe advocate for equality in road repair.

~~~
gttalbot
The situation at that level is far more dire. A non-union garbage truck driver
doesn't have a house. Can't afford a family. No health insurance. No
retirement plan or pension.

And if you go to any large company, you'll find that it's the same there
unless you're in the upper "employee" caste--you're working for a contractor
company, and have the same bad deal.

For all the discussion of diversity, any pathway out is pretty much closed.
Even if you're in a historically disadvantaged group, the large company
doesn't want to set a precedent that would establish the contractor group as
employees. So the large company will block training and advancement,
extracurricular networking opportunities, etc.

And historically disadvantaged minorities will be overrepresented in the
contractor group because of both economic and educational disadvantage.

And to throw salt on it, arbitration agreements that you are forced to sign to
work will preclude you using a class action suit to try to fix it, like
Microsoft's testing group did in the 1990s. (Thank you Roberts court.)

~~~
tacitusarc
That's a blanket statement that just doesn't hold true. Reality is much more
mixed.

Here: [https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Waste-
Management-1/reviews?fcount...](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Waste-
Management-1/reviews?fcountry=ALL&fjobtitle=Truck+Driver)

------
baybal2
Man, this is gold.

I for long tried to write something along those lines, but I think the author
did summarise my thoughts better than I could've done myself.

The class conflict — something that western literati class keep denying
acknowledgement, is really the driver of much of social progress. And this
holds more even more true in the West than in the East.

The class warfare is there, it exists, and it is what has been responsible for
the prime majority of political developments in the West for the last 30
years.

~~~
jml7c5
>The class conflict [...] is really the driver of much of social progress.

How so?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm thinking: because it gives people a strong, active, positive goal to
pursue. Members of each class want to migrate to the higher one, or at the
very least, have their children break into the higher one.

If you're discriminated or treated unfairly by a group of people, the natural
reaction would be to separate yourself from that group of people, not fight
it. But if for some reason you _really_ want to join that group - perhaps
because they're of higher socioeconomical class - then you have a motivation
to fight and reform things.

~~~
gumby
> I'm thinking: because it gives people a strong, active, positive goal to
> pursue.

Your statement comes from your philosophical stance. As it happens I share
your view about my own motivations. Despite that I recognize that most people
do not.

Also: your position sounds American (are you?). The idea of “class” and most
of the literature around it is European, where class is not something that
people can typically change. Even in the US there is little class mobility.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm from Europe, though I have enough exposure to US culture that my own
thinking does blend European and American ideas (to the extent you can even
define "European" vs. "American" thinking).

Anyway, I think class mobility is actually a real thing over here. For one, a
good chunk of Europe was under Soviet rule until ~1990, and in the early days
of proper market economy, _a lot_ of enterprising individuals moved up a few
rungs in the ladder. Secondly, it's hard to not see our industry as a perfect
way for easy upward mobility. Myself, I jumped up a level just by virtue of
preferring computers to sports as a kid.

------
analog31
In my view, education has begun to act like wealth, because education is a
form of wealth, and the productivity divide between wealth and work is
increasing.

Still, I'm skeptical of the whole idea, because it just seems too convenient
for Republicans to drive a wedge between the Democratic party and the working
class based on a perceived social division rather than real policy: We took
away your unions and safety net, but by golly, we'll protect your "dignity."

~~~
Despegar
>We took away your unions and safety net, but by golly, we'll protect your
"dignity."

Organized labor may not have been targeted explicitly like by Republicans, but
Democrats haven't really been a friend to them either [1]. Both parties have
been on board with the neoliberal agenda for 40 years.

[1] [http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-
huge...](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/democrats-paid-a-huge-price-
for-letting-unions-die.html)

~~~
gen220
Yeah, when you expand your scope of analysis to include the labor movements of
other nations, it’s striking how anemic and disenfranchised organized labor
has been in the US.

Unions in other countries have historically been a voice of the people, and
don’t have a lasting allegiance with any political party or movement. I have
no idea why American unions collapsed; perhaps, it was justified in the
moment, but the present absence of a strong voice for organized, skilled labor
is tragic.

~~~
KineticLensman
> Unions ... don’t have a lasting allegiance with any political party or
> movement

Not true in the UK - the unions have a strong relationship with the Labour
party, in terms of providing funding and endorsement of leadership candidates.
Indeed, in its original form [0] the Labour party was created as the political
wing of the unions. Many unions automatically took a cut of their members'
subscriptions as labour party funding.

Battles between the unions and the Conservative party have been key a feature
of UK politics, e.g. the Miners' strike in the 1980s [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners%27_strike_(1984–85)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners%27_strike_\(1984–85\))

------
sandoooo
As a society, a portion of the workforce has to do the plumbing, make the
furniture, serve coffee, and do all the jobs that don't require college. The
people doing those jobs shouldn't need to spending four of their most
productive years not working and accumulating debt. They should just start
four years earlier, or get vocational training for a few months to a year.

Instead of college for all, what's needed is an alternative pathway from high
school to (optional) industrial training/ apprenticeships to jobs, skipping
college altogether for those who don't want/need it. Employers need to be able
to hire non-college-graduates without worrying they're getting the dregs of
the college system. They should have fine-grained input into getting exactly
the sort of skills they want into their workers, and a large portion of this
program (for some of the low-req jobs, the entirety) should involve no-
strings-attached industry placements to get those employers comfortable with
the people they'll be hiring.

~~~
harimau777
Those jobs tend not to pay as well as jobs that require a career focused
college degree (e.g. business, engineering, computer science, and even
teaching).

~~~
rossdavidh
There are plenty of college degrees that pay no more, or considerably less,
than several of those jobs.

~~~
harimau777
Sure, but those are generally degrees which are well known for having poor
employment prospects (philosophy, art, history, etc.). Doesn't that just
change the advice from "go to college" to "go to college in one of the majors
with a track record or leading to a good career"?

~~~
hogFeast
Yep, some plumbers are making way more...even than grads in "majors with a
track record" (whatever that means).

The issue is that most jobs pay too little. College is not a reasonable way to
achieve income equality. You can graduate as many people as you like, it
doesn't create more jobs (this is how majors get a track record...by
controlling the number of people who apply).

------
mar77i
It made me realize that the reason "Learn to Code" was treated as such an
insult on social media is exactly its topical proximity to this very
discussion.

------
Ericson2314
The class analysis is right, but the economic one is a bit bonkers.

1\. The people with college degrees are also debasing their own degree by
pushing for more college, not just marginal college grads. That's not self-
interest, just naivite.

2\. As others said, college is vastly overrated. The author gets that there is
diminishing returns for new college grads, but doesn't see we are _already_
getting little bang for buck because there is a shortage of non-bullshit jobs,
and what work doesn't demand society fails to teach.

3\. Author should spend time with the UBI crowd. Contrary to the popular
imagination amoung guilty costalites of emasculated coal miners having to find
a new line of work, actua poor people understand work is not dignifying and
their is no shame in UBI (even if they think there is shame in means-tested
welfare!) It's the rich Democrats who cling to education who regurgitate the
dribble they were told about work being meaningful.

Gah, the author is sooo close to getting it. Just need to combine with
something like [https://medium.com/@alexhowlett/introduction-to-consumer-
mon...](https://medium.com/@alexhowlett/introduction-to-consumer-monetary-
theory-78905b0606ca) and they'll be there.

------
jariel
In Germany, like most places where 'University is free' \- they generally have
strict rules on the numbers that can attend, so those with proper Uni degrees
hover around 25%. (FYI in America and Canada 'post secondary' can mean
something broader).

But they have something called 'Mittelstand' or middle industry - vast numbers
of mid-sized firms that employ zillions of people, in particular, the take
take in apprentices as part of the education program. Millions of kids pour
into these programs wherein they learn one of a myriad of highly specialised
trade skills. Said skills are _highly relevant_ to industry, and point right
at employment.

There's nothing wrong with a History major, but maybe they're only good for
people who really do want to do that, because the debt and cost to society of
people who just want to 'tick the Uni' box is too much.

But consider the major social impact of training and employment: _Dignity and
a Respected Role in Society_. This to me is the oft overlooked element. These
people do something useful, material, gainful, often have unions (with board
representation), they can pay for themselves and other people respect them as
having an important role to play in society.

Obviously, this system institutionalises class to some degree. The ranks of
those going on to higher ed are full of upper/upper-middle class kids, but, at
least there's 'something with integrity for everyone'.

If Republicans were smart, they'd pursue this path because it's better for
business, but I don't believe their leadership is forward thinking enough. The
Democrats could play this angle too, however, it just doesn't have enough
'purity' and doesn't play the progressive angle hard enough.

It might be possible to start doing these things on the state level, or to
elected a leader that starts to think in these terms coming from a different
angle. We can only hope.

~~~
zhdc1
Germany also has an issue with its small and medium size enterprises being
increasingly outcompeted, relatively weak demography, and a rural to urban
hallowing that somewhat mirrors are what is taking place in China and in the
states.

I don't want to make this argument, but I get the impression that the German
economy looks somewhat similar to the American economy in the 60s and 70s, but
has managed to persist longer thanks to its unique position in the EU and some
very real competitive advantages, such as the quality of vocational training
you mentioned.

I'm worried though that these have only delayed the transition to what you
currently see in the US and UK. I'm a big fan of vocational training - most of
my extended family came up in the trades - but I don't know if it's the pancia
that both parties in the states seem to think it is, or if the German model is
feasible or even preferrable in this context.

~~~
jariel
Yes that's a fair point. But Germany still make a lot of machinery and
equipment that the rest of the world really needs, moreover, they supply their
own auto industry.

Thinking creatively, perhaps there's an opportunity to point the apprentice
systems towards 'white collar skills' as much as anything else. Lab workers
are apparently in high demand.

------
paganel
> This all fits the claim of the French geographer Christophe Guilluy about
> his own country in his 2016 book The Twilight of the Elites: Prosperity, the
> Periphery, and the Future of France.

+1 for Christophe Guilluy's book, it's really eye-opening, even more so
considering that he wrote/published it even before the "gilets jaunes"
movement started.

Not sure there's a solution for this "periphery" problem, but I see it in my
parts of the world (Eastern-European country and EU member), it certainly is
present in France and I suppose in other Western European countries, and
according to the article is also a real problem in the US.

~~~
te_chris
God it’s rampant in the UK, completely bisected between London and the rest of
the country.

~~~
growlist
Not much more than 100 years ago, 40% of world trade passed through Liverpool:
_40%_! It's staggering how quickly things can turn around, and I find it just
unfathomable how the wealth somehow just leached away to other places over
time.

------
anonu
The social trend discussed in the article has taken over the world. Not just
the USA. I realized this a bit late with the "gillet jaune" uprisings in
France. The working class from outside the cities were upset with the
increasingly disconnected ruling class and "bobos".
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobo_(socio-
economic_group)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobo_\(socio-
economic_group\)) (this wikipédia page really should be much longer)

------
yoz-y
> We don’t trust them, and would never vote for one of them. Why should they
> trust or vote for one of us?

For the same reason I wouldn’t trust a doctor without a degree proving they
did due diligence for years. I know this feels different because “anybody can
do politics” but without a large worldview the measures taken will be
inevitably short sighted.

Now, it works the other way too. As the article states, losing touch with the
base leads to problems.

~~~
ben_w
I was thinking about this recently. I’m _not_ qualified in politics, and I’m
aware that my knowledge is too limited to be properly aware of how limited it
is, but the thought was:

Democracy isn’t so much the best form of government as the best steering wheel
to keep the government aligned with the interests of the people. The best
actual form of government is technocracy, but technocracy with no democratic
accountability is just going to competently achieve things that the people may
not care about or may actively dislike.

~~~
pdonis
_> The best actual form of government is technocracy_

In a fantasy world where we actually had sciences for all the things
governments are asked to do, sure.

But in the actual world we live in, no way. You can't have experts running
government if there are no actual experts.

~~~
chii
or worse - experts that have an inbuilt bias (which they might not even know
they have!). For example, economic experts.

------
wisty
I think this essay is missing a discussion on the theories of what make
university graduates better paid. The two main theories are:

1\. Human capital. People learn stuff at university which makes them more
valuable workers.

2\. Credentialism. Universities select (or pass) people who were already going
to be valuable.

Now let's look at what we might mean by "valuable":

1\. You can fool hiring managers into thinking you're competent - good resume
writing skills, good interview skills, an impressive certificate.

2\. You can fool your manger's manager into thinking you're competent. All the
above, plus you're good at churning out superficially credible explanations
and justifications. Some critics of university might argue that they've
optimised towards teaching students how to fake competence - 4 years of
general education isn't enough to produce a truly competent thinker in a field
(not reliably for a large fraction of society) but it is enough to teach them
to write a clean-looking essay with proper citations, and to churn out
paragraphs with "topic sentence, evidence, analysis, transition" (but not
enough time that this will get too stale - you'll still be able to grade the
students from A-E).

3\. You'll actually be good for your company / society because of your ability
to analyze things, domain skills, intelligence, conscientiousness, etc.

We could also talk about general vs domain specific skills, but they're often
fairly well correlated. Competence in a domain requires thinking skills, and
thinking skills are best built up in some real domain where skills can
actually be tested (not just abstract "critical thinking" courses).

~~~
mar77i
To an employer, this seems kind of missing the point: you spent your time at
college. Did you do real work yet?

~~~
claudiawerner
As someone who's about to graduate with an MEng degree: No, I haven't done
real work yet, and I hope that most employers don't share this attitude which
gets me in a catch-22. I need to have worked to find work, but to work I need
to have found work. The only option seems to be these "graduate jobs", a large
percentage of which demand arcane tests modelled after IQ tests and tedious
timed calculator tests in order to even consider me.

Graduated with 70%+ with the title "Master of Engineering"? Not good enough,
do an IQ test to get the job. Write a compiler for a self-designed embedded
language for your final project? Not good enough, you forgot how to
concatenate lists in MATLAB. Oh, and you don't get to find out your
prospective salary until you have an offer; until then, you'll be happy to
know it's "competitive", whatever that means.

At this point, I'm not sure if I'd recommend anyone go to university unless
they want to stay in academia or something. I'm not convinced it's worth the
hassle if this kind of job search is the end result, and if you're going there
for knowledge, you're better off not getting yourself into debt with a 4%
interest rate.

~~~
swiley
Who is recommending university for knowledge (at least in STEM?) If knowledge
is all you want you’re far better off going to Wikipedia, libgen, sci hub or
even buying the books. Heck if you really need lectures for the classes (or
from researchers even!) you can legally watch them for free on YouTube!

University helps shape you socially and drag you through some cultural stuff
that a lot of people would otherwise ignore, that’s about it.

------
barrenflats
This one really hits home for me. I’m at a cross roads in my life right now
and kind of lost. I had a great job working as the number 2 at a small
business that I lucked into, but for various reasons beyond the control of the
corporation, had to close. I’m in my late 20s, and as this article puts it,
merely a high school graduate. I can code and do IT work, coordinate problem
solving between businesses, read scientific texts, understand statistics and
am very capable of managing others, amongst many other skills. Indeed these
were all attributes that allowed me to rapidly rise up the ranks. But trying
to find a fulfilling job without a Bachelor’s is beginning to feel like a
fool’s errand. My parents were both college grads and waited a long time to
have kids, so I don’t have the problems with rationalizing and asking
questions that article presupposes—indeed my inability to accept orders and
not have intellectual freedom drives me to keep looking for rewarding work,
against the odds.

Despite being described as bright my whole life, I’ve never done well in an
academic environment for a few reasons, I could readily absorb the material
but I was terribly antagonistic towards teachers who generally desire a sense
of authority in their class rooms. I also as an adult have been diagnosed with
ADHD, which to me at least explains a good portion of why I struggled in
school. I never did my homework and was told endlessly that going to community
college was the best financial option, and I was very freaked out by student
loans, the problem being that community colleges put much more emphasis on
grading coursework, which ended up being my downfall.

Part of me thinks I should just start lying on my resume about having attended
a 4 year STEM program, because the credentialism seems so real and absolutely
bullshit. I have work experience, if I got an interview they’d probably be
blown away with this “high school graduate”, but I never get interviews, no
matter how qualified I am. I’ve even been encouraged to do this by people in
the “educated elite”. They tell me to just study a given schools curriculum,
learn some names of professor and call it good enough. But I really hate lying
about myself, it feels so contrary to my nature. As the article mentions, I
feel very depressed with my life and reading people who say that a degree is a
golden indicator is genuinely depressing. I don’t know what to do, and I
honestly feel victimized by credentialism, which makes me resent the concept
of dropping everything and taking on loans to go to school. (At least my
interest rate would be good now!)

~~~
treis
> I could readily absorb the material but I was terribly antagonistic towards
> teachers who generally desire a sense of authority in their class rooms. I
> also as an adult have been diagnosed with ADHD, which to me at least
> explains a good portion of why I struggled in school. I never did my
> homework

I'd guess this is the root of your problem. People don't want to hire those
that are terribly antagonistic towards authority figures (a.k.a their boss)
and don't do their homework (a.k.a work).

~~~
barrenflats
Being antagonistic to authority is something I left behind in my teenage
years. I’ve learned a lot about social grace since then, to the point that I
consider it a strong point. Also, homework (as a rather pointless forced
learning aid) is so unlike working given my ADHD it’s ridiculous. Moreover, as
I’ve since been diagnosed with ADHD and given the ability to medicate and be
cognizant of this weakness it isn’t the issue it was when I was a teen in
college. At this point in my life I have a body of accomplishments from
business, as alluded to in earlier paragraphs.

Really though, how would an employer know either of these things; it’s not
like I‘d put them on a resume or a cover letter. I added it only to give
context to why going to college didn’t work out for me at the time, not to
describe why I think I have trouble finding a job I enjoy. I’m confused by the
unconstructive nature of this comment, it seems purposefully derisive.

------
remir
_Now those of us with postgraduate degrees and who are in the elite of the
Democratic Party live in our own Versailles, and we don’t know any working-
class people either—except perhaps the name of a barista at Starbucks or the
woman who comes by at night to clean the office._

I think this is one thing churches did really well; people from all social
spheres coming together to serve their God. It didn't matter what job or
status you had. Everybody was equal.

I'm sure the same could be achieved today without the religious aspect as
well. There's plenty of volunteering opportunities, for example. Being part of
a amateur sports team can bring people from all classes together.

~~~
InitialLastName
Right, except that we've rebuilt a world where working-class people don't have
time for leisure activities like amateur athletics and volunteerism due to the
second full-time job they need to pay the rent.

~~~
benrbray
Not to mention we've built great walls separating rich and poor in the form of
highways, so the classes never share common ground, literally.

------
overgard
I totally agree with the article, but to me the saddest part of all of this is
I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful. (I say
that with a four year CS degree). Most majors, to be blunt, are pretty useless
in terms of real world skills. The argument is "they teach you how to think".
I don't know how you would even measure that, but it doesn't seem that true,
especially since colleges are hotbeds of intellectual fads that are easily
disproved by reality. The only prerequisite to learning to think is making an
effort at it. College used to be a good signal for that, but now its not.

So we essentially created a "virtuous" class of "educated" people that aren't
as smart as they think they are, talking down to people that are struggling
economically by telling them that they need to spend 100k to "learn to think".
It's amazing things have stayed relatively peaceful.

It's funny to me because arguably I am part of this liberal elite, and even I
feel a lot of contempt and irritation towards my increasingly smug
compatriots. People really need to tone down the "flyover state" and "redneck"
rhetoric. I definitely didn't vote for Trump, but I'd be lying if I said I
didn't get why people did.

~~~
jayd16
>I'm unconvinced that a college education is actually even that useful.

How is this a question? How many high school grads have you interviewed and
thought you could spin them up to the usefulness of a graduate from nothing in
a reasonable amount of time/effort?

Education is expensive, sure. We can talk about that... but useful? It seems
obviously useful to me.

~~~
slowdog
Not sure if you're missing the point of the poster above.

Poster is more likely asking whether the education gained in college is
actually useful vs the doors opened by having that diploma.

If one dropped out of college right before graduation with 99% of the
education, likely that person would end up with worse off job prospects
compared to the person who completed their program

~~~
jayd16
The diploma is useful in certain fields I'm sure. Although I doubt most CS
employers would really hold you to it if you explained you never completed
your final quarter but aced the interview.

However, they said college education not college diploma. They're clearly
talking about the skills learned.

------
wangii
as Chinese lives in uk, they had been my questions for a long time: why did
you guys voted for david cameron, barack obama, (any politician, really) at
all? had they ever struggled to pay their bills? do they really feel your
pain?

~~~
rossdavidh
Good question. There are certain professions, and really only a very few, that
prepare one well for the task of campaigning for office. Lawyer, military
officer, business executive, actor, a few others. All of them are from the
professional class, nowadays, with the partial exception of military officer.

Once upon a time, a lot more power was held by local politicians, who were
often from the working class. Over time, more and more of that became
centralized, and the ability to speak well in public is not something that
even most professional class jobs prepare you for. Put a programmer up against
a lawyer or a CEO, and the programmer will not do well. We not only have
mostly professional class politicians, they are overwhelmingly from only a few
of those professions, because there are only a few that prepare you to speak,
from a script, to a large group of strangers, staying on message and keeping
your message short and clear.

~~~
wangii
understand. it turns out to be a marketing problem.

------
salt-licker
Great article that exposes many college-educated blind spots, in particular
that education is not a panacea for inequality. But the proposed solution of
more democratic workplaces — somehow convincing capital-holders that investing
in human labor rather than automation is in their own self-interest — feels
like swimming against the tide of history.

Meritocracy is a dangerous ideal for humanity to continue to hold so dearly.
IQ is partially genetic, and with a low ceiling — sooner than we’re ready to
accept, nobody’s brain will hold a candle to AI. Equating our economic value
with moral worth will only lead to further cultural division, despair, and
anarcho-primitivism. Instead, let’s try to build a culture, society, and
government that takes the intrinsic value of human life as an axiom, before
it’s too late.

~~~
commandlinefan
> nobody’s brain will hold a candle to AI

Nobody can outrun a car, either, but cars haven’t made humans obsolete.
Instead, we use them as tools to accomplish our goals: just as we will with
AI.

~~~
vegetablepotpie
But cars have made horses obsolete. Although horses aren’t extinct, owning one
is more of a hobby in the western world.

AI is cognitive automation. Not only will blue collar jobs be replaced, but so
to will white collar jobs as well. We’re approaching the point where capital
alone (without labor) will be able to generate wealth in more general cases.
When that happens, employing people will be a hobby. When that happens, humans
will need other ways to make income than with their labor.

~~~
dantheman
Deal with it when it happens.

How much time was spent worrying about what would happen when energy was too
cheap too meter? It didn't happen.

It's easy to come up with problems to worry about that don't actually exist.

------
baryphonic
> There is no foothold left in big cities, or anyplace else where the global
> winners live, for high school graduates to exercise even a tiny bit of
> power. There’s no church to slot into as a deacon, no chance on the shop
> floor to rise as a foreman, no union in which to become a shop steward or
> officeholder, no big-city political machine that in this digital age needs
> anyone to go door to door. Our wage workers have been stripped of every way
> to exercise the kind of morality or have the opportunities that come so
> easily to the top fifth. At least in the case of the Industrial Revolution,
> as described by E.P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class,
> there was religion—the new Methodist faith that gave the English working
> class a sense of moral superiority over their owners. But in the working
> class remade and discarded for the postindustrial age, there is an uptick in
> drug abuse, one-parent families, and indebtedness. The top fifth of the
> country, the most educated, may well be more moral—and, God knows, even more
> religious in terms of actual Christian values—than the current white working
> class. But that, too, represents another form of class oppression, worse
> than in the Industrial Revolution—the top fifth have appropriated all the
> morality.

I've never seen an article that is simultaneously semi-self-aware yet contains
such a high level of arrogance and condescension. That on its own makes it an
interesting piece.

~~~
watwut
It is interestingly skipping period after 1832 (where The Making of the
English Working Class ends) and now. The social problems were quite large and
very real.

------
slowdog
Great article, covering something we should probably keep in mind.

Higher education is often a needless gatekeeper for keeping those with
generational wealth wealthy

Often a subtext that I feel is missing here is that in the end people aren't
that different on average, and our parent's wealth matter more

Today, zip code is a pretty accurate predictor of success, there's so much
embedded in a zip code such as wealth, industry, and safety that affects kid's
outcomes.[0]

[0] [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/too-often-student-
success_b_1...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/too-often-student-
success_b_10132886)

------
anonsivalley652
Raw intelligence, by itself, is just that: raw. A wise and learned individual
has to go beyond multiple choice exam pedigree and actively seek-out the
nuances of history and the real world rather than retreating into a
comfortable filter bubble. Furthermore, the lack of quality mentors and
parental involvement has contributed to a decline of empathy and decency.
Otherwise, the result is plenty of "smart" people who are below average in
other life domains including self-awareness, philanthropy and civic
participation.

------
motohagiography
Very glad this was written and posted. However, it could have been shorter. If
education were indeed the true social value, we could just improve the quality
of public education, add an additional year or two to high school, and
essentially fold the undergrad syllabus back into the public system. Simply,
the purpose of college is to create a culturally separate managerial elite in
society.

The basic problem is the legitimacy of the elite it has produced in the eyes
of people subject to it. There was always tension, but code changed
everything. PhD holding managers today are often functionally illiterate in
their domain of responsibility, and that has a huge cultural impact.

There is reliable predictive power in explaining the culture wars of today as
the reaction against a managerialist elite using radical cultural change in an
attempt to dilute the bargaining power of competent working people, and to
insulate itself from a working class from whom they are increasingly
undifferentiated.

This is a pet issue of mine, and glad to see it's getting traction, as it's
really the defining conflict of today.

------
Gatsky
This raises some good issues but does ramble.

Coming from a country where tertiary education is more accessible and cheaper,
there is decent free healthcare and more social welfare, all of which give
more people the option of higher education, what ends up happening is people
go to University too much. Universities have undergone a huge explosion in
headcount and footprint. As publicly funded institutions, they have funded
this expansion with a kind of Ponzi scheme where more and more full fee paying
international students are required to sustain the machine. At the same time
there has been a lot of training institutes and vocational colleges popping
up, some with dubious quality and intent. The stimulus for this seems to be
that young people can't get enough quality work, and so they try and educate
themselves. They can do this partly because of the largesse of their boomer
parents. This effect is happening at all levels, including fields where lots
of education is already required, like medicine, law and engineering.

So I would agree that pumping education is not a panacea. It is starting to
feel almost exploitative around here (Australia). Weddings, healthcare and
education are surefire ways to extract money from people even when the economy
is in a slump. At least you get cake at a wedding.

------
dunkelheit
Funny how being credentialed by a proper institution (using this phrase
because it is more precise than just "education") is as important as ever for
achieving certain social standing and at the same time there is a constant
stream of voices preaching "universities are imploding, college is a waste of
money," etc.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Both can be true simultaneously, if you expand the concepts. Nobody will
disagree that attending an Ivy provides some prestige and social standing. Of
the universities imploding, most are smaller liberal arts colleges that can't
withstand changing demographics (less college students). College is indeed a
waste of money if you don't complete your degree program: you get none of the
benefits in the job market, with all the debt you took on-- the worst of both
worlds.

------
blazespin
Yeah, these leaders are trying to get free university. But what if a lot of
voters don't want to go to university?

------
hogFeast
The UK is a good example of this...the Labour Party went from solidly working
class with good connections to voters to a party of the wealthy, metro elite
with no connection to voters.

You can point to individual factors of circumstance (an ill-conceived 2015
leadership election) or big structural issues (rising inequality). But the end
result is the same: no empathy, no interest. It is funny the article talks
about race...did everyone just suddenly become a racist overnight? Or did they
just decide they don't like being talked down to? Which is more likely
(bearing in mind that the people talking down do like to talk about race a
hell of a lot).

The left will get nowhere by trying to "learn to talk" to these awful poor
people (sarcasm). They don't care. Not interested. Give the working class
their voice back (Blair and Clinton did just fine). Go back to suburbia, find
another job in which you are way overpaid for incompetence, and stop talking.
Btw, Trump has done this...he is the worst candidate, the worst
president...and still the Dems can't muster anything up...how is this
incompetence even possible?

Just generally, as someone who falls firmly into the category of metro
elite...I have never understood why other rich people feel the need to always
tell poor people what they want. Politics is to help those people but it has
gone from helping them to telling them what they should think, how they should
live, etc. Is it any wonder that doesn't win votes?

------
cleandreams
I grew up in the author's city in the midst of long term economic abandonment
and decline. It was terrifying, to be honest. I think the spread of this
across the industrialized Midwest elected Trump. I have had many arguments
with fellow liberals about the globalized economy. In a nutshell, I don't
believe in it, if the result is an alienated wasteland where the old working
class economy used to be. We, the elite (I include myself as I'm a well off
and successful engineer), have destroyed the social contract by supporting and
implementing outsourcing and automation. The result may well be the
destruction of our democracy. Cheap consumer goods from China are not worth
this price. The article is only wrong in downplaying the potential of bringing
industrial jobs back to this country. That is essential, as a part of the
overall change in priorities.

~~~
yborg
>implementing outsourcing

Exactly, this seemed completely missing from the hand-wringing about how
what's wrong with the Democratic party is that it is just too elitist for the
working classes now. There is in fact a lot of truth to that, but it is the
economic policy, or lack thereof, of both parties has allowed capital,
controlled by very few, to flow unimpeded overseas. If you want to retain a
middle-class economic base, you have to take measures to incentivize capital
to remain in the country.

My own employer is aggressively moving to shift all of it's technical
knowledge work to India; companies like Accenture and IBM now employ more
people there than in the US. There will soon be as little Knowledge Economy
work in the US as there is old Industrial Economy work. Where will all of
these college (or Denmark-style vocationally trained) end up working? Wal-
Mart. Sell the people out twice and you will end up with some kind of revolt.
You're not going to convince anybody at that point that it's the grad school
gap that's killing America and that we should have a Ph.D. For All program to
solve it.

~~~
sangnoir
> My own employer is aggressively moving to shift all of it's technical
> knowledge work to India; companies like Accenture and IBM now employ more
> people there than in the US.

Turns out "Beware the behaviors you incentivize" doesn't only apply to scrappy
startups, but scales up to whole nations. If profit is the sole metric you
judge companies/CEOs/boards by, don't be surprised by the lengths they will go
to maximize it.

------
growlist
I think the title is appropriate. I read more and more content (in what used
to be considered the more intelligent news sources) that I could pull to
shreds line-by-line, yet the publications are successful and apparently this
content is being lapped up. Their seems to be just enough sophistry,
pretentious verbosity and reinforcement of existing beliefs to make the reader
believe they have read an accurate and objective appraisal of the situation,
and to feel confident to regurgitate this speciousness on command as if it's
the truth. I'll read some obvious rubbish and can almost predict point-for-
point exactly how someone's words will proceed - and these are educated
people, supposed to be able to distinguish. It's depressing.

------
chicagoscott
This post has some relevant information:

[http://www.andrewlangman.com/articles/class-culture-
gap.html](http://www.andrewlangman.com/articles/class-culture-gap.html)

Or just read _What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class_ at:

[https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-
about-t...](https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-
s-working-class)

------
supernova87a
The problem of modern liberal America is not a divide between educated / less-
educated, or race, or any of that. Those are just symbols that make it easy
for someone to try to pin it on those false issues.

The problem is that many liberal-thinking people, having believed that they
(or the country) has solved many of the material and quality of life needs in
their little pocket of the world (and told thus by the daily media), find
rarer and rarer things to become their problems and occupy their
consciousness.

In short, liberals ironically are the one-percenters of America. Because they
live in relatively safe cities, with good incomes, and concerns for the
distant future, they think that transgender bathrooms are the most important
topic that should be discussed in the national priorities. Or that MeToo
represents the daily worry of every reasonable American. Or because things are
so comfortable and rich, why can't we afford to look the other way at
immigration laws that we disagree with? Let's have another KQED segment on
Latina artists struggling to keep their rent controlled studios in the
Mission!

Well, the other half of the country, the 99%, are not interested in putting
those rarified political issues before their daily, material struggles, the
kind that don't make it to the front page of the New York Times because
they're boring. Their unemployment, or only slightly better, their dead end
jobs that have experienced no growth in the last 10 years. Their health plans
that cost more and more, or their pension benefits that got cut. Or the
rejection letters (or just no letters) that come when they try to apply for a
different job, run by some company in the very liberal cities that spurn them,
whose medium level execs make 7 figure salaries.

Maybe it's time we confronted the fact that unless you can cut off the coasts
of this country, we will have to find a way to make the concerns of the middle
of this country, our concerns -- concretely and strategically. Because if we
don't, that middle of the country will vote to spite everything, before they
vote to help themselves, and we will all go down together.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Honestly it sounds like you’ve been watching too much TV/Twitter. No one I
know in real life is concerned with that stuff. Another article on the site
talks about the “exhausted majority.” Indeed.

~~~
dbsmith83
I agree with you that the majority is exhausted, but unfortunately there is a
very vocal minority in the liberal sphere, and they are not particularly known
for being reasonable people. It makes it seem like the average person's
problems and concerns are getting put on the back-burner, while the liberal
favored special interest group of the day gets the spotlight. How can someone
not be resentful?

I also want to point out that it's not just twitter/tv. You can see true
policy changes happening in the schools and workplaces--at least within the
west-coast liberal strongholds.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Well that applies to the right as well, doesn’t it? I’ve heard of school
districts reducing science education and talk of arming teachers.

~~~
dbsmith83
Absolutely, though this article is focused on the left. The anti-science
movement is especially frightening. I think it is related to what the article
is talking about. The rejection of science being a kind of blowback

------
mkd1964
I'm not sure how no one has figured out that the long-term goal of the
Democrats is to eradicate the middle class entirely.

To be fair, it's not a Democrat or Republican thing at all; although, in
recent years, the Democrats have become the public face of the (dare I say it)
Deep State. Almost everyone in congress is someone else's puppet, controlled
through blackmail or bribery. They do the bidding of faceless, nameless, un-
elected globalists, who's long-term agenda is, and has always has been, the
total control of all aspects of society.

Their mandate is to vote in favor of policies that benefit the elite, not the
working class.

It is no accident that the education system in the US has become what it is
today. It does not educate, it indoctrinates. It teaches kids _what_ to think,
not _how_ to think. And those that do manage to get a four-year degree are
often no better equipped to step into high-paying jobs than they were before.
So they're not getting the job offers and they now have huge student loans to
pay off.

The elite do not want a population of thinking individuals who ask questions.
They want people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the
paperwork, but not so smart that they start questioning the system.

As Trump said, "The system is rigged". And as George Carlin said, "It's a big
club, and YOU AIN'T IN IT."

------
known
"If you can't do great big things, do great little things" \--Unknown

------
burlesona
> But the truth might be something closer to this: “It’s only because of race
> that we have any part of the working class turning out for us at all.”

I’ve thought a lot about this, and wondered if we’ll see a major flip post-
Trump (perhaps a few more presidencies past), where the republicans somehow
manage to shed their racial baggage and suddenly are the party of the entire
working class while the Democrats are left with only the “coastal elites.”
Five Thirty Eight ran an article on those lines a while back... can’t find the
link, but that was also a good read.

~~~
tzs
If Republicans lose the racial baggage they are still substantially at odds
with a substantial majority of voters on health care [1] and climate
change/pollution/environment [2]. I don't see them becoming the party of the
entire working class as long as that remains true.

[1] [https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-
payer...](https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-payer-
national-health-plans-and-expanding-access-to-medicare-coverage/)

[2] [https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-
vi...](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on-
climate-and-energy/)

------
ycombonator
Case in point. CNN segment mocking working class people.
[https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1221999373829144578](https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1221999373829144578)

------
woodandsteel
Conservatives are split about the changes the article discribes. Traditional
conservatives are glad the labor movement was destroyed, and see the Knowledge
Economy as good because it is the latest product of the unrestrained free
market.

On the other hand, Trump supporters are very angry, but the problem is that
Trump's program won't do anything at all to fix the problems that are making
them unhappy.

~~~
DebtDeflation
> Trump supporters are very angry, but the problem is that Trump's program
> won't do anything at all to fix the problems that are making them unhappy.

There's no way around the fact that more education (doesn't necessarily mean
college) and greater labor force mobility (providing people with the ability
to move where the jobs are) has to be a significant part of the solution.
Stating the facts is not condescension, but I guess it can and does cause
politicians to lose elections.

------
realtalk_sp
I read this and can't help but think that the real fools are the ones buying
into the elitism narrative that the far-right has been peddling for years.
It's a deliberate red herring exploiting the very human tendency to chafe at
any perceived condescension.

If people in the US primarily voted the issues (that matter and affect them)
instead of on the basis of nonsense, Democrats would win by a landslide.

Republican politicians are trading away relatively meaningless concessions (on
things they likely don't genuinely care about like guns, LGBT rights,
abortion, religion, etc) as a cover for tremendously detrimental policymaking
that includes broad spectrum deregulation, huge transfers into the military-
industrial complex, and massive cuts to social programs including education,
healthcare, welfare, etc.

We know that's the game plan. The real fools are the people who continue to
fall for this shit.

Edit: I should add that I don't necessarily believe everything about the
Democratic Party's platform is valid. But they are unquestionably the better
choice for the vast majority of voters.

~~~
Consultant32452
I don't understand this predilection for believing that other people can't
have genuinely held beliefs and values that are vastly different from our own.
I hope we can one day come to understand that it's complete lunacy for Mobile
Alabama to force Los Angeles to live by its cultural values or vice versa. But
today is apparently not that day.

~~~
realtalk_sp
I never argued that the people themselves don't genuinely hold different
beliefs about gun rights, abortion, religion, LGBT, etc.

I meant two things: 1. in terms of their effect on peoples' lives, these
issues pale in comparison to certain other ones AND 2. Republican politicians
are using these highly emotionally-charged social issues to induce people to
vote against their own interests on dimensions of governance that would
meaningfully impact their quality of life.

~~~
Consultant32452
What makes you think you have any insight into what is in their best interest,
which of their interests should be most important to them, or how they should
measure their quality of life?

~~~
realtalk_sp
If you don't have cost-effective access to good healthcare, you could
literally die. And if you're poorly educated, you're much more likely to be
less financially well off and that could itself lead to all kinds of
suffering.

But I get the sense that you're aiming for the presentation of being
objectively insightful when really you're quite transparently arguing in bad
faith for the sake of provocation, so I'll just leave it at that.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The democrats didn’t deliver cost-effective healthcare or education or
anything they keep trying to subsidize. Prices keep going up. Funny how that
works. The smugness is just icing on the cake.

~~~
Consultant32452
I don't think these details about specific policy outcomes is where the battle
is. Look at the way he's responding. This isn't about whether your ideas have
better outcomes than my ideas. This is about ascribing you with bad motives,
disingenuousness, or portraying you as a simpleton who can't understand
political manipulation. This is about controlling you, putting you in the
bad/stupid box so you can be dismissed and controlled.

Their tactic is to call you stupid, liar, racist, sexist... You know the list.
If you argue on their terms, if you start arguing you're not stupid for
example, you're accepting their framing. This is a losing battle. Instead I
find it's more effective to simply draw attention to their tactic. Once the
tactic is revealed it loses efficacy.

If I genuinely believe you to be stupid, evil, disingenuous, etc. I won't be
able to genuinely hear you. You're just making noise. I would encourage you to
try this experiment out some time. Instead of arguing specific policy, point
out the tactic. It's repeatable and quite telling.

------
lngnmn1
Education (and inflated government) is a new way of signaling a higher social
state, similar to scholastic priesthood of the past.

It is entirely a social construct (aside from practical, concrete-math-based
STEM and engineering).

Another real-life aspect is that passing through a really decent schools like
MIT or Caltech (or Yale, as an exception) is a proof (by example) that one is
capable of self-discipline, concentration, self-improvement, able to do
research and learn on by doing.

Aside from that a degree is just and merely a social status certificate, a
certificate of belonging to a higher social class (no matter actual skills and
abilities).

I myself am from a third-world social shithole and never went to a high
school. I could, however, beat a vast majority of so-called liberal arts
majors and even some Stanford grads, which I regularly did on this very site
before CoCs and bans for use of an "inappropriate" language.

So, there is nothing much to talk about. A crappy degree is a social status
certificate, and obsession with language usage, long-words and polit-
correctness and fancy abstract terminology is merely a signaling of assumed,
self-proclaimed (and almost always absent) virtue.

------
Proven
Lost me during the Warren donation paragraph. A learned person wouldn't
support Warren so I am certain I've nothing of value to learn from the
article. Up to the Warren paragraph I realized socialist-leaning parties suck
more than illiberal democracy. No wonder globalists and socialists can no
longer win in Europe.

College degree is non-essential for most people, unnecessary for at least 50%.

------
whatsmyusername
TBH I'm indifferent to the rural working classes plight. I'm LGBT and they've
proven time and time again that they aren't my friends (both growing up in
flyover country and later after I escaped that wasteland by how they vote and
how they treat my brothers and sisters who didn't escape).

If they want to vote against our shared interests and suffer the consequences,
so be it. Me and mine will keep building without them and I won't spare a
moments thought for their self inflicted suffering (except to be glad it isn't
me).

~~~
WillDaSilva
I completely understand your position, and sympathize with it, but it seems a
bit shortsighted given that you have to live with these people, and things
won't improve for your "brothers and sisters who didn't escape" if things
don't get better for them. They'll happily drag you and yours down with them.
This is all to say that we're all in this together, and while your
indifference towards their plight may be justified, it is not productive.

~~~
anonsivalley652
In general:

Give hate and antipathy no quarter. Where there is pain, it must our pain, or
there will inevitably be revolution and chaos. Love without discrimination,
even with those you disagree with, because they cannot be moved if we act like
impetuous children by refusing to talk to them. Prejudice also cannot be
convenient, or we likely possess internal inconsistencies we must face if we
are to be honest and have integrity.

------
alexashka
Can someone translate this into:

Perceived problem, attempted solutions, potential new solution.

I have no idea what the hell the article is going on about - it reads like a
rant by a typical politically active idiot.

~~~
agrenader
Same impression

------
CriticalCathed
After finishing this article I can't help but think that he's writing about
himself for himself than anyone else. Not everyone lives in Ivory Towers or is
the partner at a prestigious law firm. I truly can't imagine this applying to
any of the leftist activists I know; and by activists I mean they organize,
protest, and collaborate multiple times a week. They're all working class
people -- of the top of my head, off the ones i know personally, there's a
retired school teacher, a caretaker for the elderly, a machinist, a waiter, an
electrician, a nurse, a mechanic, an engineer, and a janitor. They all have
various degrees of involvement in the leadership of the local D party and
activist groups.

Just who is this article aimed at? I don't mean the article doesn't have some
good points, but the way it treats this as a monolithic generally true problem
immediately strikes me as incorrect. Dude's in a bubble of his own to think
this is sage advice that can be generally applied.

