David Willetts, the universities minister, argues that grammar schools entrench privilege because middle-class parents now prepare their children so well for the entrance exams that clever children who have not been coached do not pass.

ECONOMIST: Grammar schools

Cricket gives them the opportunity to watch world-class sportsmen, and the game is now well enough entrenched to have become the subject of bitter wrangles over team selection, and the skills of the coach, the former West Indian batsman, Gordon Greenidge (who was granted Bangladeshi citizenship after the national team qualified for the World Cup).

ECONOMIST: Meet the minnows

Chip maker Intel is now putting its heft behind the trend as well, launching a new class of processors it calls the Atom, designed to bring PC processors to ever smaller devices.

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Passports and foreign vacations, once unthinkable for anyone but high officials or their well-connected kin, are now commonly enjoyed by upper-and middle-class Chinese.

ECONOMIST: China

With sustained, vigorous economic growth, 35 years from now the lowest income Americans will live at least as well as the middle class of today.

FORBES: Economic Growth, Not Redistribution, Most Benefits The Poor, Working People, And The Middle Class

When Britain, the colonial power, left Nigeria, it handed authority not to traditional rulers, who were viewed as having some legitimacy, but to doctors, lawyers and the horde of literate hustlers who did well in the British bureaucracy and the British army and now make up Nigeria's ruling class.

ECONOMIST: They are not ethnic, nor are they religious

Well out of the reach of many middle class families who nevertheless pay the taxes that support the UC system that now gets a lot of out of state students from wealthier families.

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