I think things changed a lot around 2009? I'm just going by memory... but I think that's when a lot of the ivies drastically changed tuition assistance based on income.
So I love this topic. This is a big deal now, and looking at trends in demography, incomes, and wealth, it's going to be a yet bigger deal for many years to come. But is there something that can be done? Is there a tech/business solution that helps alleviate the mutual exclusive quality that bingobangobongo mentions? If you could crack that, you could probably be make a big impact for a long time.
Definitely! This was the most line of reasoning in the article with the most impact. Property taxes are often progressive, disproportionally affecting the relatively wealthy. That's good. But when the benefits are collected and spent too locally, it means areas with higher property values also get better services. It takes away the progressive quality of property taxes.
Continue this to an extreme: property taxes that I pay are only spent on my household. The city/county maintains my property, educates my children. There's no more progressive distribution.
I think the article did a poor job of representing the recent efforts by elite universities to open up access to the children of farmers and auto-mechanics. http://npc.fas.harvard.edu/
There's still more to be done, sure, but it's important to mention that this isn't as bad as it was even 10 years ago.
Another interesting way to think about "too big to fail" is as a considerable government subsidy. Banks operate in a risky environment. When there's a meltdown, the government steps in to bail the largest banks out. These banks are getting a free insurance policy from the government, a subsidy that's not going to the smaller banks.
That would also require the patent office to grant patents in well less than a year. It wouldn't help the little guys too much if you found out you were granted the patent 6 months or more after its expired.
I work in an environment where most enterprises still cling to IE6. These enterprises do so, because they've built up an internal expertise in keeping IE6 secure (kinda) and stable (kinda).
At some point in the future, it seems like that internal expertise will be too expensive or will fail to maintain that secure and stable (kinda) environment. At that point, it seems, there will be a fairly quick migration to newer technologies.
I don't think it'll be the killer app that draws the enterprise market... it'll be the bottom line.