For 34 of the 42 years I've been alive, I've either been enrolled in or worked at private schools. At no time in those schools has the gap between rich and poor been so painfully obvious as it is right now. Interestingly, however, it isn't the very poor who are impacted most negatively. Instead, it is the middle-income family.
At least for the Boston-area private schools in the ISL, merit scholarships aren't allowed. All financial aid is need-based. With a boarding tuition of $50,000, it is very likely that a family with an income of $100,000 to $150,000 might qualify for 50% aid. That means they are still on the hook for $25,000. Given the high cost of living in Boston and the fact that there is no tax relief for private school tuition, not many families in that category can afford it.
Instead, it has become much more of an all or nothing approach. You are either full pay or full aid (i.e., the barbell effect). The kinds of kids who are traditionally the bread and butter of these schools ... middle class, smart kids who are three-sport athletes ... are getting squeezed out.
I have always considered myself very much a free market, small government sort of person. What once might have been called a Republican (at least fiscally ... I lean more to the left on social issues). However, it's hard to see much of a free market in effect these days. We are no longer willing to let big companies fail, which some might say is a good thing but it isn't really a free market ("Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell." - Frank Borman). And how we (the government) decide which companies get a bailout and which don't is a shady business.
Similarly, watching politicians hop back and forth from the major financial companies to federal appointments and back again, profiting all the way, gets me wondering if those Occupier dudes don't have a point.
The playing field is tipped, the deck is stacked ... whatever cliche you want to use. And the person most hurt isn't, I would argue, at the very bottom, because the safety nets we've implemented are so generous and far-reaching. Instead, it's the folks one rung up from the bottom on society's ladder. It's the people who play by the rules and work hard and have been asked to take salary freezes for the last four or five years, which they accept gladly because to not do so might mean that their friend and colleague might get laid off amid downsizing. Meanwhile, the income at the top increases by 95% or whatever the most recent stat was in a series of statistics that change every day depending on who is reporting it.
There was a great article in the Chicago Tribune about the death of facts (
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-talk-huppke-obit-facts-20120419,0,809470.story). The fact is that there are more super-wealthy and more people struggling in this country than I've ever seen. (I won't go back to the 1920s or the 1800s, because who the hell really knows what it was like then.)
The fact is that our national debt is astronomical. The fact is that social security and medicare, in their current configuration, are unsustainable. And it seems to me (and I would love to find out I'm wrong) that the only way forward is to increase taxes and decrease the spending of the federal government. The fact is that nearly half in the U.S. don't pay income taxes, and a significant chunk of those who do pay taxes simply can't afford to pay anything more. Those most capable of paying more are those who have most benefited in recent years and have seen their salaries explode beyond imagination. Is it unfair to increase their taxes and only their taxes? The answer is probably yes, but we have painted ourselves into a corner.
I think all of this goes well beyond class jealousy and who gets access to great golf courses. I am very happy with the salary I make. I have more than I need, have my three kids' college tuition saved away, and I can decide whether the $40k initiation fee and $10k annual dues at the nearest private club to me are worth it. I don't begrudge those for whom that kind of expense is a drop in the bucket, and I am ok with the fact that an expense like that is well beyond the reach of many. But I do think the gap between those who can pay and those who can't is growing at a scary rate (getting back to the original post in this thread).
In a democracy like ours, where we as a society generally praise those who are self-made and even sometimes praise inherited wealth (Kennedys are a good example), when it starts to look like the game is rigged, look out. The Occupy movement is probably just the beginning.