the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Meritocracy mythology

“America is still living off its reputation as a meritocracy where working hard can earn you a piece of the American Dream, but the economic realities are telling a different story.”
- Robyn Blumner (from the column “The new U.S. economy: Rags to…rags“)

This might be the best anyone’s been able to verbalize my displeasure with one of the most disturbing trends in our economy: Not just that there is a widening gap between the rich and everyone else, but how that gap seems to be codifying itself into our economic reality.

Click here to read Robyn Blumner’s column.

There’s a tiny % of people with extraordinary abilities and drive; those people get the gravy. People with no special abilities, which is most of us, and/or without intense drive, which is again most of us, get the leavings; why would it, why SHOULD it, be otherwise?

We ARE a meritocracy… but we’re unwilling to recognize or admit that most of us HAVE no merit that qualifies us to become wealthy in our current culture.

(Let me preface this by admitting I am not on the financial fringe. I work hard for excellent compensation, and I have few complaints in that regard – but I know there are millions who work much harder for much less.)

If you read the editorial I linked, you should notice it’s not necessarily slamming the self-made wealth in our country, but rather the dumb luck wealth, the kind achieved by merely being born. I can’t see any extraordinary merit in that.

But beyond that, when you ask “why should it be otherwise?” – I can only counter with the fact that it has been otherwise, and that our most celebrated economic boasts are built on the idea that it is otherwise – or rather, was otherwise.

Unfortunately, the rules have changed to the point that there are millions of folks out there whose skills and/or drive would have been well rewarded in the past, but not now.

Proponents of the old “can do” attitude used to (and some still do) brag that if you’re willing to work hard, you can make it in America – that was the essence of the American Dream. It wasn’t necessarily about become filthy rich, but living in a relative degree of comfort and economic security.

American workers have achieved all-time highs in productivity which, at least in part, have America’s most prominent corporations at similar highs in profitability. So how is it workers receive an ever decreasing share of the “gravy” they’ve been so vital to creating?

Does that really strike you as a merit-based system?

Part of having a meritocracy is that the talented few get to pass on their earnings to their families, even if the latter are all morons; that’s as it should be.

When was this time that those without talent or drive were rewarded equally with those that had those things? I’ve never heard of it.

Our CULTURE has changed, so that the talents we value has altered over time and will continue to do so, as is to be expected; being a meritocracy doesn’t require that talents we as a society don’t value should be rewarded.

And yes, the people who are working at about an average level of productivity for our current society should NOT reap the same rewards as those who had brilliant ideas, risked and sacrificed to bring them to fruition, and make all the big decisions.

The raising of the bar in terms of what the average American can do doesn’t change anything; there are still those way out in front ability- and drive-wise, and they are still the ones that rightfully make the big $… and that’s absolutely a merit-based system.

“there are still those way out in front ability- and drive-wise, and they are still the ones that rightfully make the big $… and that’s absolutely a merit-based system.”

Except that the majority of U.S. wealth is held by those who’ve made little if any sacrifice or innovation in our culture. Instead, they’re people more like the Walton heirs or George W. Bush than Bill Gates or Ross Perot.

To suggest our society rewards people based on their actual contributions to society’s advancement is to slap every school teacher, stay-at-home parent, social worker with an MSW, firefighter and police officer (et cetera …) squarely in the face.

To pretend that the CEO could even think of existing without the foundation of those who labor beneath him is ludicrous, and if you actually believe there never was a time when it was different, you might want to brush up on twentieth century history and economics a little bit. There was a time when executive compensation wasn’t more than 400 times what average workers made.

But then if you rest on the assumption that the birth of a child is a meritorious event for anyone except the mother (and possibly the healthcare providers), it would be pretty hard to demonstrate to you how misguided your notion of “merit” really is.

I suppose people who have diametric perspectives on this issue will be pretty much impossible to sway, but I’ll cap my argument with the following quote, which pretty well demonstrates my view:

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

And that was from Abraham Lincoln, which kind of goes to show how much Republican ideals have changed over the years, doesn’t it?