"Can we afford to educate everyone?" / "Can YOU afford to be educated?"

Something I was thinking about today after reading Descartes views on Skepticism. Why am I allowed to think like this? Why am I so priviledged to be able to pay for a school and sit in a room and discuss whether or not I actually exist? Meanwhile the regular Joe is pumping gas, using each paycheck for food, rent, or an addiction to cigarettes.

Is there a society where everyone can achieve this kind of education? Or should/can we afford (monetarily or otherwise) to educate everyone? Or does there have to be this hierarchy of people? An eternal caste system and litmus test to specialize our communities and fellow man.

In order to move forward and to gain, there has to be some kind of conflict right? So Marx (Was it Marx who came up with the conflict theory of human kind) in his thinking was right...Oh I called a communist right. But, stay with me...His whole idea on Conflict theory (if I am getting this right) was that there has to be some kind of conflict to get anywhere, without it, no one would fight (literally) for anything. There would be no hostile conflict to take over governments who mistreat people and so on and so on.

So does our world revolve around this constant attainment of "more"? In order to get more of anything you have to work and get something to barter for something else. So much revolves around money. To get money is to get education, or at least the opportunity for it. Think about it...When is the last time you heard a story about a national scholar from the University of Compton or U of Spanish Harlem. What I am getting at (by naming some of our more destitute areas) is that those people do not have money, therefore cannot afford to think of anything else but surviving day to day.

Is this a bad thing? That we can't educate our poor? Or does it create that hierarchy I mentioned to keep the conflict of attainment moving?

I feel selfish for being able to learn sometimes. Should we keep our system to it? Or would that create a intellectual complacency? Ok, I am switching my major to philosophy.