GETTING THE INCENTIVES RIGHT. A Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial, suggesting enhanced state support for higher education, inadvertently on purpose establishes that the source of poverty and inequality is not college.

Growth & Justice researchers calculate that each year’s “class” of about 10,000 Minnesota high school dropouts will deprive the state of $10.6 billion over their lifetimes, in lower tax revenues and higher outlays for things like food stamps, Medicaid, housing subsidies and criminal justice services.

A commenter recognizes the error in logic.

The problem is the awful education our children are receiving in K-12. How can you increase the number of college graduates when a majority of students who graduate from high school are woefully unprepared for college?

The comment concludes,

Our economy must depend on the elite to produce enough to trickle down.

The prosperity does trickle down, in that the high achievers are doing the work the under- and never-achievers don't. but the income inequality is a consequence of higher returns to skill in the presence of diminished supply of skill.