Professor Dalton Conley of NYU wrote the article excerpted below for the Washington Post with his son. I guess we can file this story under economic justice.

Were your parents rich? Maybe you should pay more in taxes.

We have both been lucky enough to attend one of the best public high schools in the country. Lots of people think that once you’ve made it to Stuyvesant High School in New York, your future will be bright. But even in a school that bases admission on a single exam taken by eighth-graders in New York’s five boroughs, class background matters.

For example, when Yo, a freshman, treks to school each morning, he often thinks about how lucky he is to live in Manhattan, closer to school than his classmates who reside in outer Queens. This gives him more time to study or sleep. (Though he’s still quite bleary-eyed as he trudges to the subway at 7 a.m. each morning!) He also has a computer at home, so he doesn’t need to go to a public library or stay late at school to do his homework. If he falls behind, our family can afford a tutor to help him. Finally, some of his friends may work very hard to get into their top-choice colleges, only to find that their families may not be able to afford them. So while all students are lucky to attend this elite institution, even here the playing field is skewed.

These imbalances become magnified after high school. Not only are the rungs on the economic ladder farther apart here in the United States than they are in, say, Sweden, but mobility — the ability to ascend or descend that ladder — is lower here, too. This is especially troubling, since Americans take pride in the idea that their country promotes greater social mobility than Old World societies do, regardless of the fact that that’s no longer so true.