Pretend you never went to school

President Obama’s SOTU address was easy to dismiss as standard-issue liberal class-baiting.  But when within the span of a week I see two eminent right-of-center publications headlining class division in America, maybe it’s time to take notice. Thursday’s WSJ featured front-page article on How a Two-Tier Economy Is Reshaping the U.S. Marketplace.  Basically, the crisis hit everyone, but since 2009 the rich have been getting richer, and they’re spending up a storm at Whole Foods and at “luxury retailers” like Neiman Marcus.  Meanwhile, Target, Macy’s, J.C. Penny’s, and Sears have seen sales slump. Hmm.  I don’t shop at Needles Markup, and have a well-worn Target card.  Workers of the world, unite!

More incisive analysis came from this week’s Economist, which described America’s new aristocracy.  The thesis is that “today’s rich increasingly pass on to their children an asset that cannot be frittered away in a few nights at a casino. It is far more useful than wealth, and invulnerable to inheritance tax. It is brains.” 

This charge hits a lot closer to home, and takes me back to my clerkship days.  My judge had 4 clerks.  Quickly the consensus arose among the other 3 that I was the least impressive clerk–by which they meant that my background made my attainment of an prestigious appellate court clerkship something more to be expected than exclaimed over.  Mind you, my parents were academics who made less money–much less money–than the parents of two of my fellow clerks.  But my compatriots vociferously maintained that my parental background, dappled as it was with 2 PhDs, 1 MD, and several MAs, gave me a serious leg up in this particular game.  In the end, I conceded that they were right. 

Where do I stack up in the new aristocracy?  While we may be slumming it at Target with the rest of the common people, we are a two-degree household.  Our children go to public schools, but they’re good public schools and my oldest girl is on the Athens Area Girls Math Team (no, I’m not kidding and yes, it’s awesome).  I talk  college all the time with my 7 and 4 year old–largely because we live in a college town and drop-offs and pickups involve passing college kids en route to dorm or class.  Given all these things, I’m pretty sure they will have leg up in the academic game.  

This advantage is a problem if we want a “natural aristocracy” of brains and talent–otherwise America’s promise of meritocracy becomes a plutocracy or a cerebrocracy.  The Economist recommends leveling the field by improving childcare and early childhood education, funding schools at the state level, encouraging vouchers, having colleges base admissions decisions solely on academic merit, and disclosure of the return college graduates receive on their degrees.  All of these sound like plausible reforms, with a likelihood of being adopted ranging from “maybe” to “unlikely” to “nil.”  But it’s sure interesting that it’s not just the liberal bastions remarking on the gap between the haves and have-lesses in the United States today.

Also, just in case you haven’t heard it, this.