When The Rich Get Richer, Everybody Else Gets Fucked

Daniel Brooks, at HuffPost, 6/1/07:

"When the rich get richer and more numerous, those at the top bid up the prices of things we all need. Consider higher education --something which, through the peculiarities of the American economic model is financed privately through tuition rather than publicly through taxes. The more one can make with a university degree should one go corporate, the more the university can charge for the degree. And that's exactly what universities are doing in response to the corporate pay boom; private college tuition has tripled in real dollars in the past generation. But the higher the tuition goes, the greater the penalty becomes for those who don't sell out. Thus rising economic inequality pushes educated people in certain career directions, regardless of where their interests lie, regardless of their values."

I reproduced Brooks' "Commencement speech" here the other day. Read it, too, just below. Sobering thoughts: gives the lie to the specious notion that a rising tide raises all boats; rather it raises all yachts...