The Gateway to guaranteed success isn’t the schools per se but the networks and peer groups enabled by the exposure in these schools which have lasting effects in later life. It doesn’t necessarily mean it applies to all attendees. However the same can’t be said of public schools. The fees guarantee a level of status and suitability of applicants.
Exclusive: education department figures reveal the private schools received about $770m in government money amid a public schools funding shortfall
Covering thousands of years in just under seven minutes, “Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset” ends with a rousing vision of the future: a world after a jubilee, an ancient term for the abolition of debts and rebalancing of power between the rich and the poor.
The share of total income collected by the top 1% of Australia’s income earners has been trending upwards since the 1980s. It is now about 9% of total income. How concerned should we be about this? To some extent it depends on fluidity of membership of the top 1% (which in Australia means earning a pretax income of at least A$246,000). If someone is part of the 1% this year but not last year, this would suggest income inequality is a fact of life but at least we still have social mobility: people have good and bad years, with the top 1% largely comprising people who happen to be having a good year. It won’t bother the other 99% of us so much. But if the top 1% comprises the same people every year, we will be more concerned about an entrenched elite moving ever further away from the rest of us.
Source: Our top 1% of income earners is an increasingly entrenched elite
When Fran Bailey moved from Brisbane to Melbourne in 1970, one big cultural difference stood out between the two cities. “I was constantly amazed at how often I was asked what school I went to,” says the former Liberal MP and Howard-era minister. “You would be invited to someone’s house for dinner and you would meet people and they would invariably ask.”
Source: Bags of money and the old school tie: Private schools and their impact on Melbourne
The US has far less mobility and equality of opportunity today than almost the entire European Union
The ‘American Dream’ of upward mobility is broken. Look at the numbers | US news | The Guardian
Depending on who you ask, class is a major barrier to social mobility — or it scarcely exists. Drive around Melbourne for a day and those conflicting views come to the fore.
via Inside the class divide – RN – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
A recent report published by Chinese academics looking at the income
Source: Half of Beijing and Shanghai population now middle class by income, says report: Shanghaiist
Suzanne Moore: Normal service has returned, and the only way out of it is if you can buy an education or have the right parents
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