If you were born yesterday, it would be a good idea to have mom show you between feedings how Craigslist works so you can search out one (or maybe two or three) of those jobs Newt Gingrich says kids should get. Be sure not to spend any of your earnings at Toys R Us because you're going to need every cent if you plan on getting a college degree.
According to The Daily:
The Daily analyzed historical, inflation-adjusted price data from the College Board to see what a bachelor’s degree might cost the class of 2034 in 2011 dollars. The result: Total tuition and fees would top $232,000 for an average-priced four-year private college and nearly $81,000 at an average-priced public university — up 111 percent and 167 percent, respectively, from the average class of 2012 tuition.
Room and board brings the average price of a four-year college education up to a projected $288,000 in 2011 dollars for four years beginning in 2030 at an average private school and $123,000 at an average public school. The class of 2012 paid about $149,195 for a private school and $64,591 at a public university, according to College Board data.
Of course, many families don't pay full freight. Scholarships, Pell Grants and endowment-funded tuition waivers reduced the average tuition paid in 2011 at a public institution by 70 percent and at a private one by 55 percent. Still the costs are soaring and putting higher education ever-further out of reach of many would-be students. Census data show that the average real income of families with at least one child has risen by only 1 percent in the past 25 years.
The rising costs of higher education add to the lack of economic mobility for people in lower income brackets in the United States as shown by numerous studies. Just last week, Jason DeParle wrote:
One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling.
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.
Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes. ...
By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.
So, class does matter in the so-called "classless society." There's another dimension as well:
As Michael C. Dawson points out, For some, This Is Not a New Problem:
[R]ecent research by Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz carefully documents the lack of social mobility among Mexican immigrants over five generations. Disturbingly, they conclude that lack of Mexican-American economic assimilation is a result of ingrained racial exclusion, with similar results to the exclusion of African Americans in their migration from the rural South to the country’s urban areas during the first half of the 20th century. The lack of social mobility is not new for our black and Mexican-American communities.
It is arguably a new reality for an increasing number of white Americans. Some major shifts have largely eliminated key engines that led to the growth of the middle class for the descendants of European immigrants as well as African Americans: stunning disinvestment in K-12 public education and higher education; the increasing proportion of the population for which higher education is now unaffordable; the decline of the influence and scope of unions and the decline in the manufacturing sector of the economy; and the decline in government employment. ...
If social mobility continues to decline, an ever-widening expanse of Americans will come to agree with Malcolm X’s angry argument a generation ago that for blacks in the U.S., there is no American dream, only an American nightmare.
Solutions? The same as the left has been talking about for a long time: spending more on education; investing in new infrastructure such as 100 percent broadband coverage; penalizing the off-shoring of jobs; busting the union-busters; heavily regulating the financiers; socializing the health care system; and restructuring the tax system. All things most of the 1%ers, that is, the ruling class, are dead set against. They have their reasons.