Alongside the defunding of education is the tesserae system, which provides poor families with a pittance of extra food in exchange for an additional entry in the reaping, or lottery from which their children are chosen to fight in the games.

A friend pointed out that the tesserae are suggestive of how the wealthy can buy their way out of military service if they so choose; for me, the tesserae smacked of the student loan payments by which so many students who grew up in non-economically-privileged and/or non-educationally-privileged families are hamstrung (given the defunding of public education) and which further hinder their success.

In addition to such policies, Panem citizens are not discouraged from thinking the tributes’ performance (e.g., IQ) is completely innate—so those who were born on third base continue to think they hit a triple—and so those whose performance is lower don’t question, and don't have time to question, public policy's lack of support for their education and therefore don’t challenge the status quo.

Better yet, the Capitol of Panem diverts attention from all of this, via divide and conquer, so district citizens literally do the killing of one another and celebrate such. Or, as in real life, engage in barbaric racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, etc.—acts that alarmingly may be related to the growing successes of groups disenfranchised previously.