The True Big Lie

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

On Facebook I follow I Acknowledge Class Warfare Exists, which on Sunday shared a link to an excellent Krugman op-ed about how the American playing field is the least level of any developed nation, and how the people claiming the loudest that they are in favor of a meritocracy are doing the most to prevent leveling that field and even work to make it steeper.

Americans are much more likely than citizens of other nations to believe that they live in a meritocracy. But this self-image is a fantasy: as a report in The Times last week pointed out, America actually stands out as the advanced country in which it matters most who your parents were, the country in which those born on one of society’s lower rungs have the least chance of climbing to the top or even to the middle.

He goes on to place the blame exactly where I would place it: the lack of health care options that result in many being unable to advance due to incomplete care of debilitating conditions coupled with crushing medical debt and an education system that is stacked towards the wealthy. As noted in the op-ed:

One long-term study by the Department of Education found that students with high test scores but low-income parents were less likely to complete college than students with low scores but affluent parents — loosely speaking, that smart poor kids are less likely than dumb rich kids to get a degree.

How is this a meritocracy?

How would dismantling the public school system altogether, as the most radical advocates of the free market propose, fix this? Consider that the basic problem with public schools is that they are funded primarily via property tax, meaning funding is poorly distributed between rich and poor areas. If public schools are abolished in favor of vouchers, the funds for those vouchers would be just as unevenly distributed, and any system of equal distribution of funds for vouchers (almost certainly through the creation of a new tax that wouldn't be subject to the limitations property taxes are subject to) could just as easily be used to even-out the funding distribution in the existing public school system.

Judging by their actions, they seem to prefer a society in which your station in life is largely determined by that of your parents — and in which the children of the very rich get to inherit their estates tax-free. Teddy Roosevelt would not have approved.

The American Dream — a meritocracy with upward mobility — is, in reality, the American Lie.

Cross-posted to talk_politics and liberal_talk.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

As I've said before, the USA is just a more technologically advanced equivalent to other big New World societies, in far more ways than not it has more in common with Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico than it does with the other democracies across the Atlantic. This is one reason *why* US economic mobility has *always* tended to be less even than that seen in Europe (another, is of course, the problem of the South). Another side of it is the outright denialism that social class exists at all in the USA, which is both ludicrous and amounts to the ostrich solution for pressing social problems.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I don't see how a pure meritocracy would help if your beef with the US revolves around the unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

"One long-term study by the Department of Education found that students with high test scores but low-income parents were less likely to complete college than students with low scores but affluent parents — loosely speaking, that smart poor kids are less likely than dumb rich kids to get a degree."

Well, pure meritocracy might end the above, for one.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Are the merits between people so vastly different that you think income inequality would increase if we only let the rich leave us poor sods in their dust?

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

My beef is with the unequal distribution of opportunity, and the claims by most on the Right that they favor a meritocracy when their policies make the unequal distribution of opportunity worse. An unequal distribution of wealth is unavoidable in any society more complex than hunter-gatherer, and I don't find it a bad thing provided that the unequal distribution isn't institutionalized. The wealth of one's parents matters more than merit when it comes to opportunity, so it's pretty clear that unequal wealth distribution in the US is institutionalized.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

During the days of Bush the Younger, America achieved its nadir as a true moronocracy. Americas will pay the costs of that mistake for generations to come.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

*cough James Buchanan cough*

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Obama may have more in common with Buchanan that Bush.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Um, no, you said that the USA achieved its nadir as a moronocracy under Bush. I'm simply using *the* man that set the lowest bar of anyone before or after him as POTUS.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

I'll disagree and say Wilson, but that's cause I hate Wilson. :P

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Eh, Wilson screwed up the rest of the planet. The ensuring the US Civil War happened and would wind up being a protracted bloodbath as it was is far more detrimental to the USA in particular. But yes, fair point.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Specifically, what?

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Both presided during a period of escalating civil tensions.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Bleeding Kansas was not escalating social tensions, it was the first stage of the broader Civil War of 1856-1876. The guy who presided during escalating civil tension (well guys, plural) were Taylor, Pierce, and Fillmore.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

In San Francisco, those streets are the streets of greatest civil tension.