Of school choice. We certainly believe in holding all schools accountable to results, especially those funded by the public. We are engaged like so many others in trying to improve our school system. You wrote in the wall street journal piece the unequal American City that it isnt that rural areas have become notably more equal. Its that other areas have become markedly less so. Income inequality is now virtually identical in the most rural of counties and the large central metropolitan ones. In other word, the oft noted hollowing out of the middle class is a metropolitan phenomenon. As the middle shrinks, big cities are increasingly divided between a highly educated growing upper middle class. What does that mean . We all talk about inequality and usually we talk about its happening in the country. But really the big change has been happening in big metro areas. In places like new york metro area, washington, d. C. , san francisco, los angeles. It is not happening in the same way out there in smaller metro areas. Or in small towns in rural areas. When i was writing this piece, i was priced to learn back in the day, 1970s, the rural, most Rural Counties were the most unequal. But it kind of makes sense, if you look at the economies back then, the one guy that owned the coal mine or had the huge farm. That guy was super rich and everybody else was really poor. So that created this big inequality. But back in the day, those big metro areas had a big middle class and that helped there to be less income inequality. There was more of a spread. But this hollowing out of the middle class is for real but its happening most dramatically in those metro areas. So for people in my world in education, those of us who live in the metro areas and we look around and say, wow, if the young people we care about are going to have any chance of making it and have a decent living theyre going to need to get a Fouryear College degree. Everybody who is making a decent salary in the high cost living places has that College Degree, almost everyone. So we get focused on college for everybody. But it turns out in a new study that it plays out differently in other places. In other places you still get paid more for that College Degree but you dont get a premium for that College Degree, and cost of living is much lower in rest of america. Meaning that young people who get a trade, an industry credential, depending on where they live, they can actually do quite well, again, especially if that place does not cost as much as areas like d. C. And new york and the bay area. How do you fix that . What are your recommendations . When we talk about income inequality, we have to make sure we target our conclusions to a given community. Some of like you were discussing with the response to the pandemic right now. One size does not fit all because its playing out differently in different parts of the country. Same here. First and foremost, the metropolitan areas themselves should be the ones that are focused on solving this problem and shouldering the cost. For example, if people want to support raising the minimum wage to help improve the earnings of those lowwage folks who generally have just a high school degree, you know, you dont want to do that across the country. You might want to do it in just a targeted metro area. Likewise, in other ways to support to go after wage supports. To try to bring up wages of people at the bottom. If you try to do it all over the country, youre going to end up really hurting the economy, again, in places where theres not as much inequality, where the cost of living is a lot less. How do you do this when our economy is largely a Service Sector economy . When in new york city and in washington, d. C. , and these large metropolitan areas, you have the highincome people are in Service Industries . And you have the lowwage workers who are providing services and not making a lot of money. And so, you have nothing really in between, when you dont have manufacturing like were used to in this country . No, thats right. That is what the economy is right now. Theres not that many of those middle skilled jobs in big metro areas. Of course, we still need plumbers and electricians and they can do okay. In the health care industry, weve got jobs that are certainly in the middle where you need some Higher Education but not necessarily a fouryear degree. But there are not a lot of those jobs. So it does make sense in those metro people when were educating young people, if they want to stay in the metro areas to try to get them through a fouryear degree. For the folks that are not going to get the Higher Education, its fair to say how can we make sure that we can support their wages so they are able if they work hard, 40, 50, 60 hours a week that they can provide a decent living for the family. I think the other big issue is the housing cost in the area. Its just ridiculous how much it costs. How much rent costs or buying a home, no less. Theres talk, because of the pandemic, maybe more people will decide they dont want to live in big metro areas. Including higher educated, higher paid folks might go elsewhere. That might bring down some of the housing costs that could certainly be a positive benefit for this terrible experience. How does this relate, though, to education, in your work at the Fordham Institute . Well, i think what it means is that educators really need to ask this question about where are the young people going to end up living . And then you might make different decisions based on that. Weve always known that there is a premium for going to college on average. And eventually, weve been able to get under those averages. Not surprisingly. Some colleges you get more bang for your buck than others. Some majors get you a lot further for pay, not surprisingly. But now we know that geography matters where you live. Out there in america, smaller towns, metro areas, now they can see that their young people can do pretty well even if they dont get that Fouryear College degree, if they get a technical degree, a trade credential, that should tell us that we should make sure that high schools have robust options for young people, including going for those career technical educational options. In other words, make sure its not just college prep for everybody with traditional courses, four years of english, math, history and science. By saying at least in the 10th, 11th grade, if some people want to work in the trade, on technical credentials, there are those options for them. We used to have a more vocational approach in high schools. We dismantled it for most part, very few young people in this country, 2 , 3 of young people really spend a serious amount of time in high School Getting ready for those technical careers. I think we need to flip that. And again, especially outside of those big metro areas where there are still good pathways into the middle class through the technical careers. We should help young people get started while in high school. Lets see what our viewers have to say. Lets go to david. Caller thank you, i had one question and then i got another comment. I took my son to a school, and they kept taking him out of the School Classroom and putting him in counselors chambers. For hour month, they did that. They didnt record it, they didnt log it in. Then after four months they tried to eject the child usual social services . Is that legal for him to go out of class for a counselor . And my other question or comment is, the teachers in my community in North Carolina asked for, like, a big raise a couple years ago, from a republican representative. And he give it to them. But if it was a raise that they were asking for and it doubled or four times what minimum wage is, whats a High School Graduate supposed to do with that unlivable wage getting offered to do manual labor . You know, theyd rather be on substance. I quit school, i could retire right now. After i get this kid out of high school, i will. Thank you. Look, first of all, it depends on the state, the rules around discipline or other issues with kids leaving the classroom. For the most part, theres been a real push to try to keep everybody in the classroom. That does sound like a strange situation there. And, look, i think the important conversation is to ask young people, what do you want to do when you grow up . Where do you want to live . And have honest conversations about education. Weve had this assumption that everybody should go to college, what we have happening is about half the kids who go to college end up dropping out without any degree, without any credential, with nothing but debt. Thats a terrible situation. I think we need to have a better conversation. Usually a good investment to get some post secondary education. But it may be depending on the Young Persons interest that a oneyear program that gets them a trade credential might be a better fit than trying to go to a fouryear program that they really dont have their heart in. And then they drop out and theyre actually worse off. Well go next to brian who is in illinois. Republican. Hi, brian, good morning. Caller hi, good morning. You know, its been my working experience. And i a member of a labor union and im really independent. But anyway, we look at the historic trend and economy . Businessmen can used immigrants to hold down the wages. I hear the arguments at bringing up the standard of living and averages of working people they bring Mass Immigration into the country and how employers will always find someone to do the job cheaper. The number one gain in business is cut cost, cut costs, maximize forecasts. How are you going to bring up, say, steves wages, when you have jose and hector coming in illegally sneaking in the country and everybody turn a blind eye to them being here, and theyll do the job for ten bucks an hour. You have to control immigration. Thats what drives me crazy about democrats, they say theyre not for open borders, you look at all of their policies, oh, just let them stay. Thats what drives down wages. We have an oversupply in our country and we have unethical businessmen looking to cut wages and thats why our wages are following. Address how we control immigration. Look, im not an expert on immigration. My understanding is there are studies that show for the lowest income workers that immigration has held down wages to some degree. To my understanding, its not a huge amount, but yet its real. I guess well see in coming years how it plays out now that immigration is reduced dramatically, of course, that was happening before donald trump was president and even more so now. We may have an experience to see how that goes down. The bigger trends as a country, our birth rate is down, were going to, over time, have a shortage of workers, at least in the long term. Again, were going to see if all of that helps to raise the wages of people who dont have those high skills or those middle skills. Its a legitimate issue. Lets go to glenda in dallas, texas. Democratic caller. Hi there, good morning. Caller good morning, how are you, cspan . I love cspan. But my question is why are people being paid by their education, instead of the work, you know, if youre capable of doing the work, then you should be paid according to the work. An employer should pay you according to your labor, your work, not your education. Yeah, i think thats a great point. And i think there is a problem, especially with employers that require Fouryear College degrees for jobs that dont really need them at that level. And yet, some employers just kind of use it as a shortcut, theyre lazy. They say, well, if i know somebody has made it through four years of College First of all, they got into college in the first place and they persisted that shows me at least maybe theyve got some perseverance, so i like that. There has been a push, though, among some economists and others to try to get companies to really ask themselves what are the skills . Are there specific skills . You need certain knowledge of information technology. Oral you need to be able to write at a certain level. Or read at a certain level. Do math at a certain level. And really be specific about those skills and be willing to acknowledge theres a lot of people out there with talent who may not have gotten that Fouryear College degree but actually can do the job quite well. I think thats a great point. Peter, a republican. Hi, peter. Caller hi, this is a very complicated subject. I just wanted to interject a few things that you could comment on. Number one, outsourcing, outsourcing of american manufacturing. And outsourcing of jobs out of the country is one big factor here. The demolition of unions, unions have diminished over the years also. Greatly which gave middle class people bargaining power. The fact of the cost of education has gone up exponentially. A lot of these students coming out of school have this huge amount of debt on their shoulders. Another factor is immigration. Back in the 70s is when immigration started to pick up in this country after the second world war. Immigration had been diminished. And since 2,000, they doubled the amount of legal immigrants to 500,000 to 1 million a year. Plus, illegal immigration has also exponentially put pressure on lowwage jobs. Now, the democrats say the solution is to raise the minimum wage and that will cause equality. And the republicans say, no, weve got to cut down on immigration because an influx of cheap labor into the country is whats keeping the middle class down. Id like to you comment on some of those things, thank you. Look. I think all of these issues, all of those factors are compliens to put pressure on the middle class. I dont think theres anything about that. For me, in my world with education, for the kind of education were providing young people. Especially in high school. I think that it means we need to have a variety of pathways into middle class. That extra is not one pathway, but its not the only pathway. And im glad you brought up the cost of Higher Education. It is true that College Costs are just through the roof. And thats been a huge change in the last generation, you know. Parents are still shocked when they see the cost and they remember what they might have paid back when they went through it. So thats a big issue. You know, if youre going to move to new york city, if youre going to move to washington, d. C. , you want to move to silicon valley, most likely, even if you take out big loans for College Degree, that will pay off eventually. Because youre going to get paid such a high salary in those places. But, if you want to live where you grew up in a small town, a rural area it may be hard to pay off a big college loan. Youre likely not to get paid as much in those parts of the country. That should be a fracter and somethi factor. Caller thank you for taking my call. Ive got a question for your request. Excited to hear about the zero policy to reinstitute the Vocational Training if ive done it correctly. But have you done a study of how much is it would cost . An analysis, how many billions of dollars are we talking about nationwide reimplementation . Thank you very much. I havent seen an estimate on that, but its a good question that we should figure that out. You know, it can be expensive, you want people to actually get trained on the latest equipment and that can be expensive. I think some of the best programs out there, though, you know, they dont try to recreate it at the high school level. What they try to do is get High School Kids to spend time at the tech colleges and community colleges, and most importantly around the workplace. You dont see 17 or 16 year olds at businesses. Again, not just technical, it would be banking and couple institutions. Spending time with adults and learning on the job. And that has been proven time and time again. Weve always had a hard time in this country making this happen. 16, 17, 18 year olds, theyre ready to do something real. To get out there and making money, we should make all of that happen. Its going to require getting employers involved as well. Sometimes, employers complain about a lack of talent coming out of the High School System understandably. They may put skin in the game as well. That includes putting money up for the training. Lets go to philadelphia, richard is watching there. An independent. Good morning to you. Caller good morning, i guess one question would be, what studies could you point me to that looks at early black Children Education in urban areas that addresses the point that youre raising . Because i have a notion that the skill development, from what im hearing is behind. So when we talk you seem to be focused on high school and moving into, you know, the Junior College or whatever, skill development. But if the skills are not implemented amongst black children at the Primary School age, theyre really never going to able to accomplish these others. And also if this happens, are you pointing to the migration because of where the employment will be like in rural areas is the only way where the Job Development for these middle income people you know, black people would be able to get the kind of jobs theyre talking about . Unless youre talking about distant job working like right now in the pandemic . So i would like to know a study, the question about black Skills Development at an early age, being able to do that. And then the whole question of migration of black people out of urban areas into rural areas. Yeah. Let me take the second one first. The question on migration, again, im not an expert on that. I do think its an interesting question that four people who are not able to get higher level skills. I think its clear right now that life is tougher if you are deemed those kind of jobs in big areas where the costs of so high. And we talked a lot since the 2016 election about the men and women forgotten out there in Rural America