The Meritocracy Trap
Page 39
TABLE 2
Calculating the Meritocratic Inheritance
Age of child at expenditure
Years from parents’ death
Compound factor
Expenditure gap ($)
Amount yielded at death ($)
8%
6%
8%
6%
3
47
37.2
15.5
15,000
558,000
232,500
4
46
34.5
14.6
10,000
345,000
146,000
5
45
31.9
13.8
22,500
717,750
310,500
6
44
29.6
13.0
22,500
666,000
292,500
7
43
27.4
12.3
22,500
616,500
276,750
8
42
25.3
11.6
22,500
569,250
261,000
9
41
23.5
10.9
22,500
528,750
245,250
10
40
21.7
10.3
22,500
488,250
231,750
11
39
20.1
9.7
22,500
452,250
218,250
12
38
18.6
9.2
57,500
1,069,500
529,000
13
37
17.2
8.6
57,500
989,000
494,500
14
36
16.0
8.1
57,500
920,000
465,750
15
35
14.8
7.7
57,500
851,000
442,750
16
34
13.7
7.3
57,500
787,750
419,750
17
33
12.7
6.8
57,500
730,250
391,000
18
32
11.7
6.5
90,000
1,053,000
585,000
19
31
10.9
6.1
90,000
981,000
549,000
20
30
10.1
5.7
90,000
909,000
513,000
21
29
9.3
5.4
90,000
837,000
486,000
22
28
8.6
5.1
90,000
774,000
459,000
23
27
8.0
4.8
90,000
720,000
432,000
24
26
7.4
4.5
90,000
666,000
405,000
25
25
6.8
4.3
90,000
612,000
387,000
Total equivalent inheritance
16,841,250
8,773,250
TABLE 2 uses the numbers compiled in Table 1 to calculate the meritocratic inheritance, by computing what the distinctive expenditures devoted to elite education would sum up to if saved, invested, and then bequeathed to elite children on the death of their parents.
This requir
es making assumptions about how many years elite students spend in graduate and professional school and, more important, about when rich parents have children, when they die, and what rate of return they would get on investments. Where Table 1 reports a range of two to seven years in graduate and professional school, Table 2 uses a rough median of four years. In addition, the base case in Table 2 assumes that elites have children at thirty and die at eighty and would get an 8 percent annual rate of return. A robustness check assumes a lower 6 percent average rate of return.
These are conservative assumptions. The average age at first birth for a mother with a BA is roughly thirty; and the average life expectancy for Americans in the top 1 percent of the income distribution is roughly eighty-seven years for men and eighty-nine years for women. With dividends reinvested, the average annual nominal return for the S&P 500 from 1980 through 2018 was approximately 11.5 percent, and the average real rate of return was approximately 8 percent. Similarly, the average annual real rate of return for the entire U.S. stock market from 1926 to 2015, calculated using the CRSP 1–10 Index and the CPI-U Index, was 8.6 percent.
NOTES
Introduction
achievement rather than breeding: This formulation closely tracks the definition given in the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. See John Scott and Gordon Marshall, eds., A Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed., rev. (Oxford: Oxford Paperback Reference, 2009), 464 (“meritocracy”). Hereafter cited as Scott and Marshall, A Dictionary of Sociology.
blocks the middle class from opportunity: Middle class in these pages refers to the segment of the population that is neither poor nor inside the meritocratic elite and therefore includes many people who might, in other contexts, be called working class. This is not a definition so much as an implication of the book’s overall argument. That is, the class that a person occupies depends on where he or she stands with respect to meritocratic inequality.
a string of degrees along the way: A BA in mathematics at Yale in 1991; an MSc in econometrics and mathematical economics at the London School of Economics in 1992; a BPhil and then a DPhil in philosophy at Oxford in 1994 and 1999; and a JD at Yale Law School in 2000. I spent two years at Harvard as a visiting graduate fellow but did not enroll toward a formal degree.
“a haven for the world’s most ambitious scholars”: “Mission, Vision, and History,” Harvard College, accessed July 29, 2018, https://college.harvard.edu/about/mission-and-vision. Hereafter cited as “Mission, Vision, and History,” Harvard College.
“educate the citizens”: “Mission, Vision, and History,” Harvard College.
“probably the most elite work-society”: Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 39. Hereafter cited as Ho, Liquidated.
the firm’s website advertises: “People and Culture,” Goldman Sachs, accessed July 29, 2018, www.goldmansachs.com/who-we-are/people-and-culture/index.html; “Goldman Sachs Is Committed to Progress,” Goldman Sachs, accessed July 29, 2018, www.goldmansachs.com/who-we-are/progress/.
True to its Latin etymology: See Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., “meritocracy, n.,” Oxford University Press, March 2018, accessed July 29, 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/116806; and Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., “merit, n.,” Oxford University Press, March 2018, accessed July 29, 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/11679. “Meritocracy” is an English formation from “merit,” which we get from the Latin meritum, literally “that which is deserved.”
Bill Clinton: “Yale’s 309th Commencement,” YaleNews, May 19, 2010, accessed July 29, 2018, https://news.yale.edu/2010/05/19/yales-309th-commencement.
Joe Biden: “Vice President Joe Biden to Be Yale’s Class Day Speaker,” YaleNews, May 4, 2008, accessed July 29, 2018, https://news.yale.edu/2015/04/08/vice-president-joe-biden-be-yale-s-class-day-speaker-0.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor: Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor gave unannounced speeches at the law school after receiving honorary degrees from the university.
oldest continuously operating university in Europe: Renaut Alain, “The Role of Universities in Developing a Democratic European Culture,” in The Heritage of European Universities, ed. Nuria Sanz and Sjur Bergan (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2002), 119.
old bottles to carry new wine: The New Revised Standard Version Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Hereafter cited as The New Revised Standard Bible. The Gospels say that when new wine is put into old bottles the bottles burst and perish and the wine spills and is lost. See Matthew 9:14–17, Mark 2: 21–22, and Luke 5:33–39. Meritocracy similarly bursts the social forms that it fills and spills out, destroying the inherited social order and undermining itself.
equality of opportunity: In spite of this historical circumstance, and although even sophisticated political observers commonly conflate meritocracy and equality of opportunity, the abstract possibility that the two ideals may come apart has for some time been known to moral philosophers. Bernard Williams, “The Idea of Equality,” in Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969), 126 (discussing the example of the “warrior society”); Pierre Rosanvallon, The Society of Equals, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 254.
slow, devastating decline: The phrase recalls Philip Larkin’s “unbeatable slow machine that brings what you’ll get.” See Philip Larkin, “The Life with a Hole in It,” in The Complete Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012), 114. Hereafter cited as Larkin, The Complete Poems.
adults would hold the office: See U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1. For the framers’ views about age and experience, see, e.g., Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1911), 396. (George Mason argued that a requirement of twenty-five years of age was needed for the House because of his experience. “If interrogated [he would] be obliged to declare that his political opinions at the age of 21 were too crude and erroneous to merit an influence on public measures.”) James Madison, Federalist No. 62. (The paper discusses why senators needed to be older than members of the House. Madison noted that senators need “greater extent of information and stability of character . . . that the senator should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages.” Madison, incidentally, also discusses a fear of powerful families trying to put their children into offices in a dynastic manner.) James Monroe, “Observations upon the Proposed Plan of Federal Government. With an Attempt to Answer Some of the Principal Objections That Have Been Made to It,” Virginia Gazette, April 2, 1788. (Monroe echoed the idea that the age requirement would help to prevent dynasties: “The Constitution has provided, that no person shall be eligible to the office, who is not thirty five years old; and in the course of nature very few fathers leave a son who has arrived to that age.”)
“collective frenzy”: See Susan Sturm and Kinga Makovi, “Full Participation in the Yale Law Journal,” report released in partnership with the Yale Law Journal (2015), 5, accessed July 29, 2018, www.yalelawjournal.org/files/FullParticipationintheYaleLawJournal_e929dpx1.pdf. Hereafter cited as Sturm and Makovi, “Full Participation.”
“collective anxiety”: See Sturm and Makovi, “Full Participation,” 9.
in interlocking battalions: William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, ed. Philip Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), act 4, scene 5, lines 77–78 (p. 196).
“this American carnage”: Donald Trump, “The Inaugural Address,” WhiteHouse.gov, January 20, 2017, accessed July 29, 2018, www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/. Hereafter cited as Trump, “The Inaugural Address.” Other telling phrases from that text include: “[We’ve] subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military”; “We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own”; “We’ve made other countries rich while the
wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon”; and “The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.”
“the forgotten men and women”: Trump, “The Inaugural Address.”
feelings about the country: When asked, “Regardless of how you plan to vote, do you think Trump’s speech reflected the way you, personally, feel about things in the United States today or not?,” 60 percent of whites without a BA said the speech “Reflected your feelings” while 34 percent said it “Did not reflect your feelings.” Among whites with a BA, these shares were 39 and 53 percent respectively. See Greg Sargent, “This Is the Single Most Depressing Finding in Today’s Polls Showing Trump Ahead,” Washington Post, July 25, 2016, accessed July 29, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/07/25/this-is-the-single-most-depressing-finding-in-todays-polls-showing-trump-ahead/.
universities are bad for America: See “Sharp Partisan Divisions in Views of National Institutions,” Pew Research Center, July 10, 2017, accessed July 29, 2018, www.people-press.org/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan-divisions-in-views-of-national-institutions/.
one for the rich and the other for the rest: The idea that economic inequality has produced “two Americas” was a leading theme for the progressive politician John Edwards, pursued across two campaigns to become the Democratic Party’s candidate for president and in a prominent speech accepting that party’s 2004 nomination for vice president. See John Edwards, “Vice Presidential Nomination Speech,” Democratic National Convention, Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 28, 2004, and John Edwards, “Two Americas” (speech), Reno Town Hall, June 23, 2007.
is coming apart: Coming Apart is the title of a recent book by the conservative political scientist Charles Murray. See Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (New York: Random House, 2013). Hereafter cited as Murray, Coming Apart.