Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth. By Joseph Stiglitz. New York Times, February 16, 2013.
Stiglitz:
Unless
current trends in education are reversed, the situation is likely to get even
worse. In some cases it seems as if policy has actually been designed to reduce
opportunity: government support for many state schools has been steadily gutted
over the last few decades — and especially in the last few years. Meanwhile,
students are crushed by giant student loan debts that are almost impossible to
discharge, even in bankruptcy. This is happening at the same time that a
college education is more important than ever for getting a good job.
Young
people from families of modest means face a Catch-22: without a college
education, they are condemned to a life of poor prospects; with a college
education, they may be condemned to a lifetime of living at the brink. And
increasingly even a college degree isn’t enough; one needs either a graduate
degree or a series of (often unpaid) internships. Those at the top have the
connections and social capital to get those opportunities. Those in the middle
and bottom don’t. The point is that no one makes it on his or her own. And
those at the top get more help from their families than do those lower down on
the ladder. Government should help to level the playing field.
Americans
are coming to realize that their cherished narrative of social and economic
mobility is a myth. Grand deceptions of this magnitude are hard to maintain for
long — and the country has already been through a couple of decades of
self-deception.
Without
substantial policy changes, our self-image, and the image we project to the
world, will diminish — and so will our economic standing and stability. Inequality
of outcomes and inequality of opportunity reinforce each other — and contribute
to economic weakness, as Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist and the
chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has emphasized. We
have an economic, and not only moral, interest in saving the American dream.
