The author is recognizing that there is a power disparity between different income brackets, and that power disparity is used to limit upward mobility. No wealthy family wants their children to be less successful than they were, and they can invest much more time and resources into ensuring their children are successful than the bracket below them.

This is at odds with the 'American Dream' that's sold to many of us -- that this is a country of limitless economic mobility if you just put in the elbow grease.

>That includes everything from legacy college admissions to unpaid internships that

>let affluent parents rig the game a little more in their children's favor.

Why does the author imply something sinister with economic division? I want my kid to succeed, so I fight for his chance to succeed. I have high end skills to offer, first in line to learn from me? My children.

This isn't deliberate exclusion of everyone unprivileged, it's hyper-inclusion of only the ones I love the most.

If this is the issue, why are we targeting certain races rather than all those whose family is lacking momentum?

I learned how wealthy, privileged, and protected even 100k is when we pulled our kids from a Catholic elementary school and moved them to an integrated urban magnet school (median income $35k). Suddenly we had some classmates who couldn't properly afford food, school clothes, and field trips. Not just one or two families, but many nice, hard-working families with smart kids. Just -- wow -- middle-class us -- we were suddenly rich, and I'd never really known it before.

My eldest will perpetuate her privilege and attend an Ivy in the fall. Her classmates, with exactly the same talent, education, hard work, and academic achievement will not, despite the availability of financial aid. Their families just didn't know how to micro-manage the application process, they couldn't afford extra-curricular enrichment, and some had other issues at home like immigration status or family health problems. Edit: and legacy preference; I am an alumn.

While I don't think it's malicious intent that "keeps low-income people from achieving what we've accomplished," there are definitely structural elements that do. I'm sure the existing system of financial games, housing, zoning, and education could be rearranged to help them much more.

But, these types of programs supply the minimum requirements for a poor kid to be accepted to the party. For them to excel, they need integration. For instance, I owe a significant portion of my success to the various middle class connections that I've had along the way. Having friends in the middle class, and especially, having those friend's parents act as guides and mentors was incredibly helpful, looking back.

Now living in one of the richest counties in the US, I see a big risk in having this income segregation. Poor kids need to have an environment where they may learn the middle class ways. And, they can't do it easily by living only among the poor.

School funding comes from property taxes, so the wealthier the area, the better the schools. Schools also do not address the myriad of other issues that arise from what class a child is born into in the US.

Wealthy parents can afford childcare, or to stay home with the child, and can afford tutors if their kids have trouble in school, etc. Wealthy parents can afford to pay for their children's college education, give their kids' good credit by making them authorized users of the parents' credit cards before they're 18, pay their rent or buy them homes, and pay their bills or give them money should they decide to start their own businesses, make investments, or pursue new careers or the arts.

Poor parents aren't at home to send their kids to school in the morning or to be there when they get back because they're working, and they can't afford tutors if their kids are struggling. Kids often have to work jobs in high school and give the money they earn to their parents to pay for housing and expenses, and they are on their own when it comes to college, moving out, or pursuing a career. Even when they're out of the house, they may still have to help financially support their parents, siblings and extended family.

There are also the issues of food and housing insecurity that stem from poverty, and they have an impact on children's ability to learn, cope and move up from their station in life.

/realpolitik

Disadvantaged families have a hard time providing the nurture their kids need to overcome the gap. This is an incredibly self-reinforcing cycle, because the more help these kids get the more help other kids get too, so the gal remains.

Social status, including all the things from home ownership, how green is your lawn, how big is your investment account to extracurricular activities for admissions (and credentialism) in general - but also the larger labor market too - are all close to zero sum locally. And mobility for disadvantaged groups is ridiculously low, because - again - things like status preserving structures like zoning regulations, school districts, etc.

So much for the land of the free...

To the point: you are arguing that segregating students by capability increases income inequality - which is false to disingenuous over generations.

The paper that the article is about shows that your chances of going to a great college are 117 times higher if your parents are top 0.1 percent than if your parents are in the bottom quintile. So little Zach who's dad packs parcels for Amazon doesn't even have 1 percent of the chance of getting into Princeton as Matt who's father heads a team working on the Amazon Web Services. Not even 1 percent.

And apart from that I never understood why a genetic advantage like being born smart is less unfair than other birth rights or whether success in life depending on making the right choices when you are a teenager should be much more of a meritocracy. Almost no kid makes those right choices - to study the right things hard, do extracurricular activities etc - without a supporting parent enabling it.

And when there seem to be no fair meritocracy it's so much worse that the wealth distribution is skewed beyond anything.

I suppose in olden days of yore, labor was cheaper so people could afford some of the 1-1 instruction/tutoring/etc from the article.

Nowadays, the more common approach is to hustle/coach your kid so they get into highly selective K-12 programs, and/or pay up for the highly selective private school flavor. You then put your kids in the same dozen or so box-ticking exercise extracurriculars that all your social group are doing to their kids.

Little league baseball? LOL, that's for the poors. My kid does fencing. Camp? Sorry that's below my kid, he/she does summers abroad at Oxford. Summer job when they turn 16? My kid doesn't need the minimum wage cash, anyway they are staying with our friends in DC to volunteer at HQ of an NGO this summer.

By 17 you have a kid capable of scoring 1500+ on SATs, with a deep resume, and no ability to handle adversity.

The real shock comes when they are up against 100,000 similarly coached kids. The kids end up only getting into colleges at best as selective as their parents, and quite often less so. Most of these kids are also so busy on their all-rounder resume building for 17 years, they have no career aspirations or idea what to do for a living..

You get a stacked hand economically, culturally, and socially. We often focus on the economic part, but I think it is the other two that contribute way more to the status quo being limited upward movement from poorer classes to the wealthy / elite / prosperous.