Did you see this this morning?
David Brooks concisely lays out some of the huge problems for people that are not in the top 25% of the income distribution have to access education, including this:
Research by economists Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti suggests that zoning restrictions in the nation’s 220 top metro areas lowered aggregate U.S. growth by more than 50 percent from 1964 to 2009. The restrictions also have a crucial role in widening inequality. An analysis by Jonathan Rothwell finds that if the most restrictive cities became like the least restrictive, the inequality between different neighborhoods would be cut in half.
In general, he seems to be paying attention to things readers tend to appreciate, such as logic and facts. And then out of nowhere we get hit with:
I was braced by Reeves’s book, but after speaking with him a few times about it, I’ve come to think the structural barriers he emphasizes are less important than the informal social barriers that segregate the lower 80 percent.
His proof? He tells an anecdote about a friend “with only a high school degree” he took to eat to a place where the bougie sandwich names made her so uncomfortable they had to leave.
I'm sorry, this is a bit mad. He explains some of the huge structural problems well and then concludes the “informal social barriers” are more important, with no evidence? Some anecdote about a friend he assumes was made uncomfortable by sandwich names? Maybe that happens to some, but in what world is that a bigger problem than being physically impeded access to decent schools?
I have a plan: we should replace Medicaid, the welfare system, etc. with 200 copies of Emily Post's Etiquette (19th Century Edition, obviously). That would fix everything.
Anywhoo, here are some of the choice Tweets on this today: