Decade after decade, smart and educated people flock away from Merced, Calif., Yuma, Ariz., Flint, Mich., and Vineland, N.J. In those places, less than 15 percent of the residents have college degrees. They flock to Washington, Boston, San Jose, Raleigh-Durham and San Francisco. In those places, nearly 50 percent of the residents have college degrees.
He cites the under-appreciated Enrico Moretti. Read the entire column. I agree with it, particularly his conclusion. However, does the relative strength of Texas in recent years undermine the model in which highly-educated elites flock to Blue locations?
It begs the question a college degree is causal to success.
It also begs the question that the people from “from Merced, Calif., Yuma, Ariz., Flint, Mich., and Vineland, N.J… flock to Washington, Boston, San Jose, Raleigh-Durham and San Francisco.”
I found this the hardest to believe “They’ve been raised in an atmosphere of social equality and now find themselves in a culture that emphasizes the relentless quest for distinction — to be more accomplished, more enlightened and more cutting edge. They may have been raised in a culture that emphasizes roots, but they go into a culture that emphasizes mobility — a multicultural cosmopolitanism that encourages you to go anywhere on your quest for self-fulfillment. They may have been raised among people who enter the rooms of the mighty with the nerves of a stranger, but they are now around people who enter the highest places with the confident sense they belong”
So many unverifiable premises, so little time.
Worth considering that most of the flocking done by elites to Texas is to Austin, which is the bluest city in the state (ignoring the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande valley). To be sure there’s also immigration to Dallas and Houston, but Austin is the poster child for “Californians emigrating to Texas”. We like to joke about it; hardly anyone (of means) living in Austin was born here.
Actually the overwhelming majority of in migration has been to SanAntonio, DFW and Houston. Austin has certainly grown but it has enjoyed only its proportionate share of the growth.
Picking 1990 as an arbitrary starting point, here’s 1990-2010 pct. pop. growth by county:
Dallas: 27.8%
Bexar: 44.7%
Harris: 48.4%
Travis: 77.7%
Obviously the top three started from larger initial populations, so in absolute terms they’ve added a lot more persons than Travis. It would be interesting to explore the migration destinations of specifically the “smart and educated” (to use Brook’s words) folks, though.
The problem is his premise, which goes to show why I’ve never bothered reading Brooks. Is the high concentration of college-educated in those rich cities correlation or causation? Do these college grads flock to newly rich towns, built by college dropouts like Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison and Bill Gates, and then proceed to parasitically suck out their drops of blood or do they help drive growth in some way? I think there’s good evidence of the former, with how silicon valley has become a marginal place these days, simply chasing after fads, almost always silly. Boston is the poster child: highly educated, full of universities, yet nobody can think of any great invention that came out of there. Washington and Raleigh-Durham are even worse.
The reason we have rising inequality is not because of “meritocracy,” it’s because globalization and the internet temporarily augment pre-existing “stars,” because they get new platforms they can easily extend onto, before all the new players realize the power of these new platforms and destroy those same stars. These forces are fundamentally for decentralization and against inequality, but initially they seem the opposite. The example I always like to give is Katie Couric getting a $15 million/year a contract in the last gasp of old media, before she’s fired and replaced by Scott Pelley making a quarter of what she made. Soon, there will be no CBS Evening News: there go all those high-paid college graduate salaries skewing the income distribution.
The true meritocracy is coming and it will be global and online, not to mention so much better than what came before.
All of the weeping and gnashing of teeth over inequality often overlooks the multiplicity of factors that contribute to inequality, and jumps right to serving as a vehicle for preexisting political agendas.
I have taught in a middle class public school in Michigan for ten years, and it is clear that IQ, values, family structure, effort and awareness of opportunities play their roles in inequality. I occasionally find a David Brooks’ column spot on, and although it is interesting that “highly educated” people from elite schools choose to live amongst each other is interesting (and flee the places he listed) it does little beyond that.
It will be interesting to see if there is a point at which it will become mainstream to articulate that there are limited actions that can be taken to lessen inequality, while living in an innovative society that encourages risk-taking and individual initiative. I guess we will see.
I traveled from a rust belt town to attend an elite college and stayed in the elite city and worked for an elite employer for many years before returning to my rust belt city where I discovered that if you went to an elite college and have elite employers on your resume you can go to one of the Vineland, NJ, type cities and more or less run the place. They need you. Really bad. You will have access to jobs and a lifestyle you would never have been able to achieve in the elite city, where hundreds of thousands of people just like you are competing for the same elite jobs. In the non-elite city, you can have real power, make a big difference in a company or organization’s work, use your training intelligence and creativity to solve real problems, and feel like a real grown up who is part of a real community. This is the real tragedy of the elite cities: All the talented people and advanced degree holders working at jobs well below their qualifications all for the privilege of living in a brand name city (where, I will admit, one is more likely to meet an elite mate), when they could go back to their own little towns and be the ruling class — with all the power and privilege and potential to do good that that implies.
Other places that those with College Education have flocked to are Highlands Ranch, Parker, Castle Rock, Lonetree, south of Denver, CO, as well as Louisville, east of Boulder, CO