Kamala Harris Still Has Time for a Big New Idea in Economic Policy
In typical campaigns, presidential hopefuls and their staffs spend a year or so researching, debating, testing, and messaging new policy ideas. I know because I’ve helped develop economic policy for five Democratic presidential candidates. It can make a real difference if the campaign correctly identifies an issue that moves voters who otherwise might stay home or even support the other side.
This process or something much like it produced two of Donald Trump’s economic planks this year—the economically mindless and destructive proposals to impose steep tariffs on all U.S. imports and deport millions of undocumented immigrant workers.
Kamala Harris hasn’t done such policy prep, since just eight weeks ago she couldn’t foresee becoming the Democratic nominee. However, there’s still time for her campaign to pay attention to a major issue that concerns millions of voters and offer them a response that would underscore her pledge to chart a more prosperous future for middle-class Americans, what she calls “an opportunity economy.”
The big issue is the fading prospect of upward mobility for Americans without college degrees. One way to help people raise their incomes is by offering free retraining for higher-paying jobs.
From 2000 to 2020, the average real earnings of the middle 60 percent of U.S. households increased by less than 1 percent per year, for gains of less than $650 annually for 20 years. It’s a different story for the top 20 percent. Their average real earnings increased by nearly $80,000 over the same period, or upward mobility for those who had already made it.
Since wealth is built on income, most moderate and middle-income families also have little to show for decades of hard work. The Federal Reserve reports that the bottom 50 percent of all Americans own just 2.5 percent of the country’s total wealth today, compared to 67 percent held by the top 10 percent. In dollars, the bottom half has assets worth about $3.8 trillion versus $102 trillion in assets owned by the top 10 percent.
These developments help drive this year’s election. The fading prospects for upward mobility have made millions of Americans feel aggrieved and resentful. Donald Trump has used his own sense of personal grievance and resentment to channel their disappointment—to his benefit.
The Harris-Walz campaign can turn the tables on this vital issue by giving average Americans a reason to feel optimistic about their futures. The campaign has promised to mandate paid family leave and sick leave, limit price hikes by large corporations in certain circumstances, reduce medical debt and subsidize first-time home buyers.
That’s fine as far as it goes. But people still have to live on what they earn. In this economy, the way most people increase their incomes is to become more productive.
For young people, that has meant earning a college degree. In 2022, the median income of full-time workers ages 25 to 34 was $66,600 for college graduates and $80,200 for those with graduate degrees—compared to $45,200 for those who attended college without earning a degree, $41,800 for high school graduates, and $35,500 for those who didn’t finish high school. Today, nearly 32 million Americans ages 25 to 39 lack a college degree.
While few of them have time or money to go to college now, the government could easily afford to give them free access to evening and weekend retraining courses at public community colleges as a pathway to revive their prospects for upward mobility.
More than 1,040 public community colleges across the country offer courses in areas that pay substantially more than the average for non-college graduates, such as plumbing, electrical work, computer programming, and bookkeeping. The median earnings of plumbers in 2023 was $51,290, or 23 percent more than the average high school graduate ages 25 to 34. The median earnings of an electrician was $61,600, or 47 percent higher than a typical high school graduate. The starting salary for entry-level computer programmers averaged $65,000, 55 percent more than that of standard high school graduates.
Taking the time and effort to earn certification as a plumber, entry-level computer programmer, or electrician could be within reach for most working people. At the Delaware County Community College, you must complete nine courses or 28 credits to be certified as a plumber and qualify for a plumbing apprenticeship. Similarly, certification as an entry-level computer programmer from Montgomery Community College in Maryland requires 20 credits or seven courses. And the training to qualify for an electrician apprenticeship requires 24 credits or eight courses at the state’s Carroll Community College.
Community colleges today charge about $450 per course, so retraining would cost about $4,050 for a would-be plumber, $3,150 for those aspiring to be entry-level computer programmers, and $3,600 for a student electricians program. Using these three examples, the average retraining program would cost about $3,600. A new nationwide retraining program could waive those costs since the point is to restore upward mobility for millions who couldn’t afford to lay out $3,600, regardless of the potential benefits.
Those costs would be de minimis for taxpayers. If we assume that 500,000 low earners would sign on each year for two-year programs of evening and weekend classes, the government could cover annual tuition costs for 1 million people each year for $2 billion annually. That’s equivalent to two-tenths of 1 percent of all non-defense discretionary federal spending.
That’s a very small price to create a new path to upward mobility for millions of aggrieved Americans and get millions of those voters to take a new look at Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
This essay appeared originally in Washington Monthly.