The GOP Tax Plan Would Make It Harder for Workers to Get New Skills

How can workers adapt to a constantly changing labor market and the oncoming threat of automation? One of the suggestions researchers and policymakers have is to go back to school and acquire new skills. As my colleague Derek Thompson wrote recently, “Making it easier for adults to attend college part-time is crucial if, as the White House has claimed, the U.S. economy [actually] suffers from a ‘skills gap.’” But the latest Republican tax plan, which passed in the House, would make it more difficult for many of these workers to tap into precisely the types of education and training they have been told they need.