Downsized but Not Out

by BARBARA EHRENREICH & TAMARA DRAUT

[from the November 6, 2006 issue]

A magical glow arises from the land. "Our economy is evolving," Labor Secretary Elaine Chao told CNN in September. "It's transitioning to a knowledge-based economy." Many liberals are dazzled by the light, imagining a new era in which poverty is curable by education and the highly educated know no limits. Those who go to college and work hard are set for life, while the clueless and the unprepared drift down into the working poor. Message to Americans in a competitive, globalized world: Sink or swim. It's up to you.

But wasted knowledge piles up all around us, along with the blighted lives of people who made "all the right choices," got their degrees and have either lost or never found their footing. There's the Atlanta-based IT marketing expert who has alternated between professional jobs and janitorial work, the laid-off chemical engineer who's spent time in shelters, the 50-ish Minneapolis cab driver who offers his business card along with the receipt, because he still harbors some dim hope of returning to a job as a media executive.