Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?
In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don&#x27;t get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances.<p>Furthermore, strong labor laws have compressed salaries towards the mean, so people are not locking themselves into poverty by working low-wage &#x2F; low-skill work, but there&#x27;s a difference enough that people are incentivized to get educated. I think it&#x27;s a decent harmony - compared to other countries, where you have a poor working class and rich&#x2F;wealthy middle&#x2F;upper middle class.<p>I think that if education is the <i>only</i> ticket to a better life, then you get stuck with the problem that not all educated people are equal, and only certain educated people get to climb socioeconomic classes (too many schools, too many graduates, i.e inflation)