Coming from a Princeton egghead that's not a surprising point of view.
^^^^^^^
Commenting that 'America is not a great place for people with only a high school degree' is not looking down on the less educated, it's an observation about how society at large treats the less educated. Between this and your description of one of the world's leading economic thinkers as a 'Princeton egghead', It's hard to give much weight to anything else you say.
How is this "looking down"?
He made a well-backed empirical observation: life in this country sucks donkey balls for those who didn't graduate from college.
In this day in age a college degree gives you a much higher chance of success/income. Median net worth is 8x higher for those with a college degree. And salary is almost 18k/year higher.
In the past the gap was much smaller. It's been growing and will likely continue to grow.
[0]https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/02/11/study-income...
As an example: A friend from back home got into boring right out of high school. 20 years later, he runs one of the most successful directional boring companies in the region and is a multi-multi millionaire. He was told in high school that if he didn't go to college that he would fail.
I don't find this to be a unique story from my perspective but I do have some bias.
I'm an exception, too. I'm not about to argue that, because I exist, the trend doesn't.
The town I grew up in was very polarizing. We had both extreme wealth and extreme poor. As a retrospective, we had very equal opportunities from all income brackets. There were wealthy kids who had huge success but many others who fizzled out and didn't do anything. Some ended up with extensive criminal records.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, some of the extremely poor kids I grew up with could barely afford ramen as a family. Some ended up drug dealing and in jail, others ended up with massive success.
There were a few key attributes that I think determined success vs. failure for all wealth brackets. We had some very key teachers in shop classes who encouraged folks who didn't think they could go to college to specialize in trade skills. Those who took it seriously and worked hard at it are largely stable or well off. Those who didn't fizzled out.
Obviously this is all anecdotal as it was one graduating class in one city in one state. However, in my own experience the desire to work hard dictates much of the success of an individual. It would be foolish to say that it is the ONLY thing contributing to success but I believe that it is a large portion of it.
Also, that word "lucky" drives me nuts but I'll save that for another time :)
Determination and readiness to work hard enable someone to take advantage of an opportunity. But you still need the opportunity.
Coming from a Princeton egghead that's not a surprising point of view. It seems very typical for those with education to look down upon the less-educated.
The truth is, US high schools miserably fail the non-college-bound student. I know people without college degrees who make six-figure incomes in the trades or as entrepreneurs. They did not get there with any help from high school guidance counselors or administrators (all college-educated), who basically write you off if you are not college-bound or come from an impoverished background.
The message from traditional education for anyone not going to college is "you have no future" rather than helping to explore the limitless expanse of possibilities that are open to anyone who has the motivation and encouragement to pursue them.