Reader: ever since I heard economist Tyler Cowan being interviewed on NPR this week about the charred hellscape that is our immediate future, I have been in something of a state. You see, Cowan, whose new book is entitled Average is Over, says that not only is staggering income inequality here to stay, but that most of us can look forward to subsisting on cat food and nettles while a few wired creative types and their hipster underlings lord it over us.

Honey I shrunk the middle class


But as I listened to Cowan describe our inevitable fate, one in which middle class jobs are left smouldering on the ash heap of history and every aspect of our sad lives is ruthlessly tracked and graded, one of those deja vu feelings came over me again. I’ve seen this movie before, and I bet you have too. In fact, if you happen to find yourself in a state where the education profession is undergoing an ambitious reordering in order to unstifle our failing public schools and at last put our children on a path to college and 21st century prosperity, I bet you’re watching this movie right now. And even more in fact, you might think that the very goal of policy makers and Education Reform, Inc was to usher in just the unequal future that Cowan predicts.

Race to the bottom


In the brave new unequal world that awaits us, the majority of Americans will eke out a lower middle class existence. If you are in a cutting edge state, such as Tennessee or North Carolina, this will not be news to you. Both states have embarked on innovative new ways to compensate teachers that involve paying them less. How much less? In North Carolina, starting teachers now earn just $30,000. Did I mention that 2014 is the Year of the Teacher in the Tarheel state? That’s great because it now takes starting teachers 15 years before they’ll earn $40,000.

Retire on this


It’s widely understood that the end of pensions and their replacement with 401(k)’s has exacerbated inequality, meaning that old age is more gruesome than golden. Which is why it is essential that we put students first by eliminating the pensions of virtually the only remaining professionals who still have them: teachers. It’s a well known fact that teachers without pensions are much more likely to put students on a path to college and 21st century prosperity than their be-pensioned colleagues—or at least it soon will be.

Opportunity knocks


Fortunately not all of the news is bad. While the bulk of us cluster around the fire cans of our lower middle class existences, a few meritorious individuals will enjoy handsome rewards for their outstanding meritoriousness. Reader: I give you the Opportunity Culture, an idea that is literally packed with merit. And did I mention that still others among us — the innovative, the disruptive, the edupreneur — will do extraordinarily well?

Grade me


But how will we separate the most excellent from the ever swelling pack of lower middle class mediocrity? Cowan predicts that in America 2.0  “everyone will be ruthlessly graded — every slice of their lives, monitored, tracked and recorded.”

We’ll have a kind of new meritocracy, but again, it will be a meritocracy, which will be oppressive and perceived as oppressive in some ways due to more rapid measurement and this requirement that the person in some way really prove himself or herself.”

Here too, reader, your future appears to have arrived just a bit ahead of schedule.

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