The Roots of American Working-Class Discontent

1. And by that standard, the preponderance of the evidence shows that a growing share of the less-educated population is worse off than 40 years ago, that a major way they are worse off is that the labor market offers them fewer opportunities for work that will support their families and communities, and that this particular failure has great explanatory power for many of their broader social problems.
2. So while the standard Bureau of Labor Statistics data look alarming (e.g., median earnings of a high-school graduate down 15 percent between 1979 and 2017), Scott introduces a long series of adjustments: a different price deflator, 20th and 50th percentile instead of high-school graduate, add in benefits, disaggregate by race to account for immigration, and so on.
3. If I understand Scott, he sees this as evidence that the labor market is not the problem, because if people aren’t even looking for work then it doesn’t matter what work is available.
4. But while Scott highlights the imperfect correlation between economic shifts and social consequences, the cultural explanation’s flaw is much deeper: It doesn’t hold for the “winners.” We all swim in the same cultural pond, generally speaking, but we swim in very different labor markets.
5. Lastly, while this isn’t evidence per se, I do think it relevant that the theoretical framework under which we have pursued economic growth for the past 50 years holds straightforwardly that we should expect to see the creation of “winners” and “losers.” We built an education system geared entirely toward college completers.
6. My view, as I describe in The Once and Future Worker, is that American workers — specifically, those without a college degree — are facing a deepening crisis, for which primary responsibility lies with a couple generations worth of public policy that disregarded labor-market health.
7. I would say exactly the opposite — that men giving up on work entirely is prima facie evidence of a deeply broken labor market.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/re-the-roots-of-american-working-class-discontent/