I wasn't actually implying a socialist solution to the problem. A system in which large numbers of potentially useful citizens are wasted because the education system and the health system is in trouble. If it's a capitalist society, then it can come up with some capitalist solution.

But the children of the poor do not get the same chances in life as the children of the rich - and that is discrimination. If it were "You can't have books in your school library because you are black" it'd be recognised as such. But when it's "You can't have books in your school library because you are poor, and your parents are poor, and your school is poor", that's discrimination too.

And you don't have to be a socialist to hate that kind of thing, and to find ways of ending it. Isn't that the kind of thing "compassionate conservatism" is supposed to be about?