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.
A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.
Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image, but thee who destroys a good book, kills reason its self.
You only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics,you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.
If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.
The studious silence of the library ... Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness.
I had hundreds of books under my skin already. Not selected reading, all of it. Some of it could be called trashy. I had been through Nick Carter, Horatio Alger, Bertha M. Clay and the whole slew of dime novelists in addition to some really constructive reading. I do not regret the trash. It has harmed me in no way. It was a help, because acquiring the reading habit early is the important thing. Taste and natural development will take care of the rest later on.
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