Inequality Makes The World Spin.

Ya know, I don't often agree with David Brooks, the New York Times conservative columnist. But in today's column he talks about inequality in terms of two different terms. On the one hand, there is the inequality between the 1% and the 99%, he says. That's the Wall Streeters and bankers and CEOs against the rest of us. But the other type is the inequality between the college educated and those less fortunate. And that's the group with the greater disadvantage, the greater inequality. Brooks points out how much easier it is for the child of a college grad to get into college, get through college and finish with far less debt to deal with. If your parents didn't get to college, the chances are you won't either. That's where this country is in trouble. And it's why this country is in trouble. Because we have a shortage of college educated workers and an over abundance of non-college, untrained workers. And until this country figures out a way to change that, we're going to continue to have a problem. Now some of the problem can be solved with trade schools. The thing is though, some children of less educated parents should go to college and some children of college educated parents should go to trade school. Here, the problem is that college folks often tend to look down at trade schools as being for those not smart enough to go to college, while trade school folks often look down at college folks as not being able to fix a light because it needs a new bulb. This is the IT era, unless the computers are down. Manufacturing is better done with robots, unless the robots don't work. Or that new house won't get built unless a skilled worker builds it. And none of the equipment will get designed unless that engineer designs it. So we have not only a problem of inequality, but a problem of lack of respect. From both sides. In fact, if there were more respect, there would be less inequality of any type.