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High school grads twice as likely to be jobless than college grads
The economic meltdown has hit non-college grads much harder than the educated. And conservatives are very good at exploiting their anger and unease.
You know how bad the economy is, right? Maybe your 401(k) has tanked. Perhaps you were out of work for a few months. You could have a mortgage under water. Or your health insurance has an impossibly high deductible. Yeah, we're all singing the blues.
I've gotten out my violin to play a mournful accompaniment to our collective angst.
Wait, what's that I hear in the distance? A dissonant, thundering chord someone just hammered on the piano -- a harsh interruption of my languid dirge. Now it repeats, getting louder and nearer.
It's the sound of rage, of people I don't know -- millions of them -- unable to make rent or feed their families. Why don't I know them? They don't have college degrees, and nearly everybody I know does.
The truth is, brothers and sisters, however much we the degreed are suffering, we don't know the half of it. And unless we familiarize ourselves with the other half very, very soon, what was supposed to be a new progressive era could quickly give way to the rage of the Tea Party.