The causes of income inequality are numerous, complex and poorly understood. Therefore I am going to present an entirely simplified thought experiment that would “solve” the problem and then take myself really seriously in terms of advancing the idea.
We should endorse the immediate and rapid end of Harvard and any other elite university in America. The logic is simple:
(1) People tell me income inequality is bad (I CAN be persuaded by research that there are links between inequality and real economic outcomes, but that is hardly what is claimed by anti-inequality-ists)
(2) People tell me income inequality is increasing (again, I can point you to data that indicate this, but few anti-inequality-ists can actually describe for you what that is, and why income inequality is of particular concern as compared to some other type of inequality, or that it’s really, really, really, hard to measure)
(3) Therefore, ban Harvard and its intellectual siblings.
Ah. Done. That was easy. Why ban Harvard? Simple. It is well known in the empirical literature that one of the drivers of increasing inequality is a change in the way people match themselves up – mostly in families, but also in other ways of interacting. The simple story was that in the 1950s there was much more marriage and relating across classes than there is today. The “typical” married couples today consist of highly educated people marrying highly educated people and lowly educated people (at lower rates) marry people from their same educational and income class. This perpetuates and deepens inequality. Of course, where does most of the high-talent, high-income, high-class sorting happen? At the elite colleges. Ban them and then you fix that “problem.” Ah. Easy peasy lemon squeasy.
Other reasons to ban Harvard on inequality grounds should be obvious. If you take the view that education is a way to enhance productivity, and you understand that those folks who are already more productive and more privileged are more likely and more prepared for Harvard, then by banning Harvard you would reduce the already large advantage the already productive people have. After all, Harvard can’t possibly enroll, in equal shares, the less productive members of society along with the more productive members. AND … there are not enough good colleges in the US to ensure that we represent people across the skill, income, productivity distribution in equal proportions, so the only obvious choice is to ban Harvard.
If you take the view that education does nothing to improve productivity but instead acts as a signal, that would seem to be even MORE reason to ban Harvard. In other words, the reason Harvard grads get paid so well upon graduation is that the mere act of graduating from Harvard reveals a signal that they are indeed more productive workers. This signal is easier for truly rich and bright people to obtain and harder for the less fortunate to obtain. Therefore, by eliminating the signal entirely, it would be harder for the truly productive to signal this to future employers (and mates) and we would therefore have a pooling equilibrium wherein inequality is reduce. So again it is obvious that we should ban Harvard.
There are all kinds of other reasons to ban Harvard too, but this post is about income inequality. If you want to tell me, “yeah, but…” then please do explain why that “yeah, but …” is any different than someone responding to arguments for extreme increases in progessivity of the tax code that perhaps there are reasons to not prefer that as a “solution.”
Enjoy digging out of the snow. Literally.