The difficulty in a number of Western democracies is that the playing field is being tilted. For many in the middle class, prosperity seems unattainable because a good education - today's passport to riches - is unaffordable.
Interpretation
Access to quality education is crucial for middle-class prosperity, yet many find it increasingly unaffordable.
In this quote, Raghuram Rajan highlights the challenges faced by the middle class in Western democracies, where the promise of prosperity is eroded by the rising costs of education. He suggests that education has become essential as a means to achieve financial success, yet its inaccessibility for many poses a significant barrier to upward mobility, creating an uneven socioeconomic playing field.
In practice
This quote can be used to spark a discussion at a community forum about the importance of making education affordable for everyone.
The U.S. should worry about the effects of its polices on the rest of the world. We would like to live in a world where countries take into account the effect of their policies on other countries and do what is right, broadly, rather than what is just right given the circumstances of that country.
Customers often value a good more when its price goes up. One reason may be its signaling value. An expensive handcrafted mechanical watch may tell time no more accurately than a cheap quartz model; but, because few people can afford one, buying it signals that the owner is rich.
The problem with forbearance is that it always looks like a good thing to do until it stops working.
Perhaps the hardest challenge has been to persuade the public, impatient for rapid growth, of the need to ensure stability first. Growth, it is argued, is always more important, regardless of the looming economic risks.
Too many years away from academia renders you pretty incompetent at research and teaching. So I had to go back.
The gap in India has always been between the promise and the execution.
Schools are the single largest lever of mobility in this country. When we commit to creating and enforcing laws that acknowledge the injustice of the past, we open up the possibility of using schools as a means of reducing inequality.
I went to what can only be described as a slum school in Salford - rough and full of trainee punks - but I was very lucky in that I had one inspiring teacher, John Malone, who gave the whole class an interest in romantic poetry.
Weird behavior is natural in smart children, just as curiosity is to a kitten.
Teach and practice, practice and teach - that is all we have; that is all we are good for; that is all we ever ought to do.
I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.
Books are slow, books are quiet. The Internet is fast and loud.
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