But the reason is that they have fewer skills than their counterparts back then. We're not talking rocket science or even calculus but simple computing with decimals, fractions, and percents and recognizing geometric figures. So there you have it. The lack of skills that we've heard so much about turns out to be an absence of the basics of arithmetic. More government spending on schools is not the solution.
Government schools are the problem.
Used with permission. Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow discussing sources of inequality in American incomes. David R. Henderson is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and a contributing editor at Red Herring magazine.