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.
My belief is that nothing that can be expressed by mathematics cannot be expressed by careful use of literary words.
Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect.
A quality education grants us the ability to fight the war on ignorance and poverty.
Wrong education and upbringing produces ugly personalities, whereas a fine upbringing and good education will bring forth superior sense and feeling, as well as nobility and purity of mind.
A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.
Sometimes you buy a book, powerfully drawn to it, but then it just sits on the shelf. Maybe you flick through it, the ghost of your original purpose at your elbow, but it's not so much rereading as re-dusting. Then one day you pick it up, take notice of the contents; your inner life realigns.
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