Today's lie: "College was supposed to..."

...close the wealth gap for Black Americans" Instead, the gap increased. Why is this NOT surprising? See the original, mail-informed clickbait Wall Street Journal article below.

The fact is that there was never any such reason to expect a close in the wealth gap, other than in the manipulative minds of progressive pundits, college presidents and politicians.

Fifty years ago, with a minimum wage of $1.60 and hour, negligible college tuition and no need for or presence of significant borrowing to attend college, a high school sophomore could easily determine that the difference in average wages of a 21-year old high school graduate and a 21-year old college graduate would differ by so much that over the next 40-45 years, whatever earnings the high school grad had while his or her peer was in college, would disappear quickly and then quickly add up to a million-dollar advantage for the college graduate by the time of their retirements.

In terms of wealth accumulation, the greater level of spending by the college graduate would also be accompanied led by a higher rate and amount of savings and investment by the same college graduate. Add in the net present value at retirement of the significantly higher Social Security retirement income for the higher earning college grad and an early, strong advantage in wealth for the college grad would only increase at retirement. The high school grad found himself or herself at a deep disadvantage from an early ahge, and the power of compound interest on earnings and investment increased the difference. Even Thomas Piketty, the leftist economist heartthrob of the progressives knew this, i.e., financial capital grows and even a faster rate than does labor capital. Hard work, physical or mental, would never explain success as much as would deferring income to maximize subsequent lifetime earnings. In high school, I used to envy the drop outs and non-college-going kids, the ones with their own cars and good union or manufacturing wages, tooling around the high school while I was in class. Those early advantages disappeared forty years ago and today those seemingly lucky dropouts and high school grads have little if anything to show other than perhaps a tenuous pension from a funded retirement plan, possibly from a bankrupt firm, e.g., Bethlehem Steel.

As to the black and white wealth gap among college graduates, even recognizing the higher cost of education and levels of borrowing does little to illustrate the problem, other than the fact that poor blacks probably borrow much more than do less poor whites, all the time the college claiming that they are making college 'affordable' to the poor by lending them hundreds of millions of dollars. The problem is that only the colleges benefit from these loans; colleges get their money up front and the college graduate and the lender are left holding the risk. And this is a very risky investment, not the surefire winner promised by colleges and politicians for the last fifty years.

And here's more. Many of these 'high need' borrowers fail to finish their degrees, eliminating the potential earnings advantage over their next forty years. And worse, many of these heavy borrowers are pursuing relatively worthless majors and, in some cases, worthless degrees from exploitative colleges that indenture the student with debt that far exceeds the student's ability to pay back their debt. And beneath all this is a massive complex of colleges and rapidly rising tuitions, colleges who perpetuate the lie, promote worthless programs, and petition the government and donors for more money to fuel the ravenous appetite of today's billion-dollar college.

The issue is not discrimination or equity; the issues are a combination of malice by the college and stupidity by the prospective liberal arts major.

College Was Supposed to Close the Wealth Gap for Black Americans. The Opposite Happened. -

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