President Trump’s startling win in 2016 ushered in a new era of economic populism. Ever since, both parties have been vying to offer a new economic deal to blue-collar Americans, whose earning power had been declining for decades.
They could use a new deal. According to the Federal Reserve, real median earnings for non-college workers fell 14 percent over the past 40 years, while those for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher have grown by 14 percent.
Opportunity in America looks very different to people on opposite sides of the diploma divide. Whereas non-college workers contend with downward mobility, the highly educated rise into tonier precincts of upper-middle-class affluence.
This disparity disfigures our society, and populists across the political spectrum are right to want to redress it. Unfortunately, they have proved better at posturing as working-class tribunes than at tangibly improving their lives.
