Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a theory about the Americans drifting toward socialism. They are highly educated but under-earning, he argued, people who feel something has passed them by. What passed them by, he said in a clip of the exchange that spread rapidly across social media, was common sense, and that is probably why they cannot hold a day job.
He meant it as a joke, but it sounds more like an admission. Almost every claim he made falls apart when compared to data from his own government. The one point that holds up actually criticizes the economy he oversees, not the people in it. His comments also come as Americans are already struggling with higher prices caused by tariffs that his administration says are helping.
The Day Job Claim Collapses First
Start with the day job, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics settles it quickly. College graduates post the lowest unemployment rate of any education group in the country at just 2.8%, compared with 3.2% for workers with some college, 4.7% for high school graduates, and 6.4% for Americans without a diploma.
This pattern is one of the most consistent findings in federal labor data. Each higher level of education makes someone more likely to have a job, not less. The highly educated Americans Bessent criticized are actually the most likely to be employed. He has it completely backwards.
Poverty Lives Where Education Is Lowest
We see the same pattern when looking at poverty. Census data shows Louisiana has the highest poverty rate at 18.9%, followed by Mississippi at 18.0%, New Mexico at 17.8%, and West Virginia at 16.7%. Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Alabama are also high. Most of these states are in the South and Southwest, and they also have some of the lowest college graduation rates in the country.
The individual-level data is even starker. Census figures for 2024 show adults without a high school diploma face nearly six times the poverty rate of degree holders, 23.1% compared with 4.1%. Education does not create poverty. It remains the strongest protection against poverty this country has, which makes it strange for a Treasury Secretary to sneer at it.
Under Earning Describes The Typical American Worker
Here’s the twist: there is one thing Bessent got right in his insult. Millions of educated Americans really are not earning enough. But he misunderstood both the reason and how widespread the problem is.
Research from the Economic Policy Institute shows that American workers became 90.2% more productive between 1979 and 2025, but typical pay only grew by 33%. EPI says this gap is due to decades of policies that weakened workers’ bargaining power. According to their calculations, this costs the average worker about $16 an hour. Not earning enough is not just a problem for a small group. It describes most American workers. Bessent thought he was criticizing socialists, but he was actually describing the whole country.
The Jobs Are Failing To Pay
So who are these people, really? The membership data that conservatives highlighted comes from Nate Silver’s review of the DSA’s own survey. It shows that most members are teachers, nonprofit workers, social workers, and public employees, with about 80% holding at least a bachelor’s degree. These are all regular jobs by any standard. The real issue is how much these jobs pay.
Teachers now carry a 25.2% pay penalty relative to comparable college graduates in other professions, according to a new EPI and CEPR analysis. Inflation-adjusted teacher wages actually fell 6.2% over the last three decades while other graduates gained 28.8%. Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors reports the typical first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old, the oldest ever recorded, and first-time buyers make up just 21% of the market, the smallest share since tracking began in 1981.
If you do everything right in this economy—get a degree and take an important job that helps society—you end up earning 25% less than your peers and buying your first home at 40. That frustration is what Bessent misunderstood as a personal failing.
Who delivers the message matters too. Bessent spent years running hedge funds before leading the Treasury. He talks about personal responsibility while his administration spends on expensive White House renovations, even as wages stay flat and families face higher costs. When someone worth hundreds of millions tells underpaid teachers their problem is a lack of common sense, he is not pointing out their failure. He is showing his own disregard.
It is not common sense that these Americans are missing. It is fair pay. And the Treasury Secretary just went on TV to mock the one thing—education—that reliably helps Americans escape poverty.
