(2019-09-17) Markovits How Life Became An Endless Terrible Competition

Daniel Markovits: How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition. Two decades ago, when I started writing about economic inequality, meritocracy seemed more likely a cure than a cause... In practice, however, meritocracy now excludes everyone outside of a narrow elite. See Alternatives To A College Degree.

the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000.

Meritocracy has created a competition that, even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win

Even meritocracy’s beneficiaries now suffer on account of its demands. It ensnares the rich just as surely as it excludes the rest, as those who manage to claw their way to the top must work with crushing intensity, ruthlessly exploiting their expensive education in order to extract a return

Diagnosing how meritocracy hurts elites kindles hope for a cure. We are accustomed to thinking that reducing inequality requires burdening the rich. But because meritocratic inequality does not in fact serve anyone well, escaping meritocracy’s trap would benefit virtually everyone.

Elite middle and high schools now commonly require three to five hours of homework a night; epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned of schoolwork-induced sleep deprivation.

she must approach work as an opportunity to extract value from her human capital, especially if she wants an income sufficient to buy her children the type of schooling that secured her own eliteness

Today, the higher a person climbs on the org chart, the harder she is expected to work.

Americans who work more than 60 hours a week report that they would, on average, prefer 25 fewer weekly hours. They say this because work subjects them to a “time famine” that, a 2006 study found, interferes with their capacity to have strong relationships with their spouse and children, to maintain their home, and even to have a satisfying sex life

The capacity to bear these hours gracefully, or at least grimly, has become a criterion for meritocratic success

The familiar arguments that once defeated aristocratic inequality do not apply to an economic system based on rewarding effort and skill. The relentless work of the hundred-hour-a-week banker inoculates her against charges of unearned advantage. Better, then, to convince the rich that all their work isn’t actually paying off.

it is simply not possible to get rich off your own human capital without exploiting yourself and impoverishing your inner life

education must become open and inclusive

reform work, by favoring goods and services produced by workers who do not have elaborate training or fancy degrees

The main obstacle to overcoming meritocratic inequality is not technical but political.

In his book Oligarchy, the political scientist Jeffrey A. Winters surveys eras in human history from the classical period to the 20th century, and documents what becomes of societies that concentrate income and wealth in a narrow elite. In almost every instance, the dismantling of such inequality has been accompanied by societal collapse, such as military defeat (as in the Roman empire) or revolution (as in France and Russia).

History does present one clear-cut case of an orderly recovery from concentrated inequality: In the 1930s, the U.S. answered the Great Depression by adopting the New Deal framework that would eventually build the mid-century middle class. Crucially, government redistribution was not the primary engine of this process. The broadly shared prosperity that this regime established came, mostly, from an economy and a labor market that promoted economic equality over hierarchy—by dramatically expanding access to education, as under the GI Bill, and then placing mid-skilled, middle-class workers at the center of production.