It's not ridiculous but I think it wasn't very well presented. The argument isn't that everyone should have a PhD. That wasn't even mentioned. Access to higher

It's not ridiculous but I think it wasn't very well presented. The argument isn't that everyone should have a PhD. That wasn't even mentioned. Access to higher education was mentioned but that means college in this context (most likely even an associates degree). The argument being made in the article isn't about making everyone above average it's about shifting what average is. Times have changed but sadly education and job training for most people has not. The person who used to stand on an assembly line and pop rivets all day is no longer a middle class wage earner. Why? Because popping rivets "at scale" isn't a problem anyone even thinks about anymore. But for people who don't have any other marketable skills or education past high school this is a big problem. All countries that have been around for a long enough period of time go through this, the US is young enough that we're entering the phase now and we do have opportunity to try to make things as good as we can for as many people as we can. This is not to say that we'll ever stop unemployment because we won't. Our focus needs to be on education and job training in a big way. If the digital/IT age is driving the global economy and a factory can comfortably employs thousands of people the US should be building those kinds of factories. Eventually the places the US outsources to will become too expensive and jobs (some of them) will move back to the US. This is already happening. The middle classes that have been and are being built overseas will by definition grow past the point where paying them to install glass screens in cases will be good enough for them.