Professor Mankiw Lectures Professor Krugman on Top 1%: Education Matters

Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw lectures professor Paul Krugman on the top 1%:

I am comfortably in the top 1 percent. I believe that Paul, with his Princeton professorship, regular Times column, speaking fees, and moderately successful textbook, is there as well. I suspect (although cannot prove) that if he and I had stopped our educations after finishing high school, we would not have been anywhere near where we are in the income distribution. If that is correct, might it be better to think of education as the key rather than focusing on the growing influence of oligarchs?

I am inclined to think that education is important here in part because the large increase in the share of the top 1 percent from the 1970s to the present occurred together with the increase in the rate of return to education during this period documented by labor economists. It is possible, of course, that the the two phenomena just happened to occur simultaneously. But the timing suggests that the two trends--the increasing value of education and the rising share of the top 1 percent--may be related.

No word yet when Paul Krugman will blame Republicans for running Chicago's, New York's, and L.A.'s public school system in a giant plot to keep children out of the top 1%. Because everyone knows that libertarian types have been running those school systems for decades.