And while the achievement gap between the poor and the middle class has been narrowing, the gap between the middle class and the rich has been widening.
That is very different from how things were not so far back. In those days, the playing field between the middle class and rich was more level and the poor weren't so academically demoralized as they are today.
Fifty or sixty years ago, colleges like Harvard and Yale ceased to be preserves of the rich and idle and opened up to the ambitious of other classes, but over the last twenty or thirty years, the new rich (and what remains of the old rich) have retaken the elite institutions and become a self-perpetuating class.
Of course, it's not wholly unearned. The elite work. They prepare. But they have more opportunities and take advantage of them. It seems like others lower down are too stressed and burnt out to compete with the privileged.
Oh yooooooooo hooooooooo...AFFIRMATIVE ACTION!
The G.I. Bill is what got many more people, of the middle class, into the IVY LEAGUE and other colleges than anything before!
Until the '60s, the vast majority of jobs didn't require a person to have a college degree to get one and/or rise in a company/career!
Most people, even those from the 0.0001% didn't go to college, until BABY BOOMERS came along and their parents were encouraged to send their kiddos to college.
The wealth gap, between the wealthy and even the upper middle class, has been GIGANTIC...for most of the history of this nation; it is NOT a "recent" development.
So you at least grasp the concept. Why is it so hard to believe these people haven't done the same with wealth and power to influence Washington DC?