The Meritocracy Trap

by Daniel Markovits

  reasonable estimates suggest: Modern poverty statistics were not kept in the Great Depression. But the most reliable estimate suggests a poverty rate as high as 66 percent in 1914 and 78 percent in 1932. See Robert Plotnick et al., “The Twentieth Century Record of Inequality and Poverty in the United States,” Institute for Research on Poverty, Discussion Paper no. 1166-98 (July 1998), University of Wisconsin–Madison, 58, accessed August 7, 2018, www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp116698.pdf. See also Robert Plotnick et al., “The Twentieth-Century Record of Inequality and Poverty in the United States,” in The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, vol. 3, ed. S. L. Engerman and R. E. Gallman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 249–99, Figure 4.4; G. Fisher, “Estimates of the Poverty Population Under the Current Official Definition for Years Before 1959,” mimeograph, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1986.

  By one estimate: See Christine Ross, Sheldon Danziger, and Eugene Smolensky, “The Level and Trend of Poverty in the United States, 1939–1979,” Demography 24, no. 4 (November 1987): 589.

  War on Poverty: See, e.g., “Johnson State of Union Address Provides Budget $97.9 Billion, War on Poverty, Atomic Cutback,” New York Times, January 9, 1964, accessed August 11, 2018, www.nytimes.com/1964/01/09/archives/johnson-state-of-union-address-provides-budget-of-979-billion-war.html.

  Thorstein Veblen: John Patrick Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 33, 135.

  “are by custom exempt”: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 1.

  “a steady application”: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 8.

  “music, or diversion, or conversation”: See Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Frank Woodworth Pine (New York: Henry Holt, 1916), 69.

  “indolence or quiescence”: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 43.

  “elaborating the material means of life”: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 10.

  “non-productive consumption of time”: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 43.

  “a degree of honor attaches”: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 1.

  exploit: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 8.

  public merrymaking: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 8–15.

  English spelling: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 394–400.

  did not sully themselves with work: Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, 171. Veblen writes, “The pleasing effect of neat and spotless garments is chiefly, if not altogether, due to their carrying the suggestion of leisure—exemption from personal contact with industrial processes of any kind. Much of the charm that invests the patent leather shoe, the stainless linen, the lustrous cylindrical hat, and the walking-stick, which so greatly enhance the native dignity of a gentleman, comes of their pointedly suggesting that the wearer cannot when so attired bear a hand in any employment that is directly and immediately of any human use. Elegant dress serves its purpose of elegance not only in that it is expensive, but also because it is the insignia of leisure. It not only shows that the wearer is able to consume a relatively large value, but it argues at the same time that he consumes without producing.”

  “if you destroy”: “Destruction of the Leisure Class, Says Morgan, Would Cause Whole Civilization to Perish,” Associated Press via Reading (PA) Times, February 5, 1936, accessed August 8, 2018, www.newspapers.com/image/47578199/.

  “began at ten”: Steve Fraser, Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 542. Hereafter cited as Fraser, Every Man a Speculator.

  “the banks close at three”: Martin Mayer, Wall Street: Men and Money, rev. ed. (New York: Collier, 1962), 39–40. Hereafter cited as Mayer, Wall Street. An erratum in the book replaces “Dow” with “Down.”

  “around six-thirty”: Mayer, Wall Street, 39–40.

  “third-generation Yale man”: Fraser, Every Man a Speculator, 487.

  “treated as uncouth ruffians”: Fraser, Every Man a Speculator, 488.

  threatened with legislative sanction: Fraser, Every Man a Speculator, 487–90.

  gentlemen of independent means: Fraser, Every Man a Speculator, 488.

  “dressed in a suit”: See Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 18. Hereafter cited as Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy.

  “nourished themselves”: Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy, 18.

  reflected long-standing conventional wisdom: American Bar Association Committee on Economics of Law Practice, The Lawyer’s Handbook (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company, 1962), 287. William Ross similarly cites a 1965 American Bar Association Survey that reported that law firm associates typically billed just fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred hours annually and partners just twelve hundred to fourteen hundred. See William G. Ross, The Honest Hour: The Ethics of Time-Based Billing by Attorneys (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1996), 2–3, citing Clark Sloat and Richard Fitzgerald, Administrative and Financial Management in a Law Firm (Standing Committee on Economics of Law Practice of the American Bar Association, Economics of Law Practice Series, Pamphlet 10, 1965), 2. Hereafter cited as Sloat and Fitzgerald, Administrative and Financial Management in a Law Firm.

  only fourteen hundred hours in a year: See Peter Giuliani, “Financial Planning and Control for Lawyers,” ABA Journal 63 (January 1977): 60–70, accessed January 31, 2019, https://books.google.com/books?id=MMPODtsVjGIC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=%22financial+planning+and+control+for+lawyers%22&source=bl&ots=TGFj64ggsb&sig=6r8Uyltb 2dxjlihoOjw3UVlkphM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7_9GM7d3cAhWKAXwKHUwuDbUQ6AEwAXoE CAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22financial%20planning%20and%20control%20for%20lawyers%22&f=false.

  others report similar hours: See, e.g., Sloat and Fitzgerald, Administrative and Financial Management in a Law Firm, 2–3 (“Experience with a number of firms indicates that a yearly schedule of 1400 to 1600 hours for each associate and from 1200 to 1400 hours for each partner represents a norm. Naturally, there will be individual variations.”); Deborah Rhode, “Institutionalizing Ethics,” Case Western Reserve Law Review 44, no. 2 (1994): 711, accessed August 8, 2018, https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1977&context=caselrev (“Conventional wisdom just a few decades ago was that lawyers could not reasonably expect to charge for more than 1200 to 1500 hours per year.”); Carl Bogus, “The Death of an Honorable Profession,” Indiana Law Journal 71, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 924, accessed August 8, 2018, www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1802&context=ilj (reporting that median hours for partners and associates alike were 1,500). Indeed, as recently as 1984, the Altman Weil Survey of Law Firm Economics could report that average billable hours for partners in the firms that it surveyed were 1,531 per year. See Marci Krufka, Mining the Surveys: Law Firm Partners Working Harder Than Ever (Newtown Square, PA: Altman Weil, Inc., 2003), 1.

  Young investment bankers: See Leslie Kwoh, “Hazard of the Trade: Bankers’ Health,” Wall Street Journal, February 15, 2012, accessed August 8, 2018, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204062704577223623824944472.

  In a story familiar: Ho, Liquidated, 88.

  A standard “disciplinary joke”: Ho, Liquidated, 88.

  “the stamina to work”: Brian Dumaine and Lynn Fleary, “A Hot New Star in the Merger Game,” Fortune, February 17, 1986, accessed July 18, 2018, http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1986/02/17/67133/index.htm.

  “banker nine-to-five”: Kevin Roose, Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014), 114.

  “purposeful Darwinism” . . . “unreasonably high”: Kantor and Streitfeld, “Inside Amazon.”

  “can work long”: Kantor and Streitfeld, “Inside Amazon.”

  “
a continual performance improvement”: Kantor and Streitfeld, “Inside Amazon.”

  cull less productive workers: The firm, being “driven by data,” will stop this only “if the data says it must.” Kantor and Streitfeld, “Inside Amazon.”

  Amazon also imposes: Kantor and Streitfeld, “Inside Amazon.”

  Apple, for example: See Ben Lovejoy, “Former Apple Managers Talk of the 24/7 Work Culture: ‘These People Are Nuts,’” 9to5Mac, October 1, 2014, accessed August 11, 2018, http://9to5mac.com/2014/10/01/former-apple-managers-talk-of-the-247-work-culture-these-people-are-nuts/. Recall also the law firm that tracks partners’ contributions in a database, updated every twenty minutes, that may be accessed by every partner, at any time and from anywhere, by computer or smartphone. Report of anonymous partner given to author by email, December 7, 2016.

  wrung out of American firms: The connection between corporate restructuring and increased managerial workloads is well documented. In one detailed study from the telecommunications sector in the mid-1990s, for example, 93 percent of middle managers reported increased workloads following restructuring. See Rosemary Batt, “From Bureaucracy to Enterprise? The Changing Jobs and Careers of Managers in Telecommunications Service,” in Paul Osterman, ed., Broken Ladders: Managerial Careers in the New Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 73. See also Peter Cappelli, The New Deal at Work: Managing the Market-Driven Workforce (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999), 129–30. Hereafter cited as Cappelli, The New Deal at Work.

  Managers’ hours grew steadily: Daniel Feldman, “Managers’ Propensity to Work Long Hours: A Multilevel Analysis,” Human Resource Management Review 12 (2002): 339.

  exceeded fifty-five per week: Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 181, citing a Korn/Ferry International poll. Hereafter cited as Schor, The Overworked American.

  over sixty hours per week: Schor, The Overworked American, 181, citing a Heidrick and Struggles poll, also cited in Ford S. Worthy, “You’re Probably Working Too Hard,” Fortune, April 27, 1987, 136.

  over the course of the 1980s: Schor, The Overworked American, 181, citing Sally Solo, “Stop Whining and Get Back to Work,” Fortune, March 12, 1990, 49.

  The rate of increase perhaps slowed after this, as the initial work efficiencies it aimed at had mostly been achieved. See Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano, “The Expanding Workweek? Understanding Trends in Long Work Hours Among U.S. Men, 1979–2006,” Journal of Labor Economics 26, no. 2 (2008): 311–43. Hereafter cited as Kuhn and Lozano, “The Expanding Workweek?” This article uses data from the Current Population Survey between 1979 and 2006 to show that managerial work hours increased most rapidly in the 1980s. But the trend has not reversed, or even stopped, and Fortune magazine reports that executives today “are working harder than ever.” Patricia Sellers, “You’re Working Too Hard!” Fortune (blog), August 20, 2009, accessed August 11, 2018, http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/08/20/youre-working-too-hard/ [inactive].

  A 1990s poll of 1,344 middle managers similarly reported that 33 percent of managers work forty to forty-nine hours per week, 57 percent work fifty-one to sixty hours per week, and 6 percent work more than sixty hours per week. See Anne Fisher, “Welcome to the Age of Overwork,” Fortune, November 30, 1992, 64–71, and Jeanne Brett and Linda Stroh, “Working 61 Plus Hours a Week: Why Do Managers Do It?,” Journal of Applied Psychology 88, no. 1 (2003).

  Other reports of managers’ work hours include Arlie Hochschild’s conclusion that top executives work fifty to seventy hours per week. See Hochschild, The Time Bind, 57. See also a mid-1980s poll conducted by Korn/Ferry (Ford S. Worthy, “You’re Probably Working Too Hard,” Fortune, April 27, 1987, 136), which showed that senior executives worked an average of fifty-six hours per week.

  “the members of the Management Committee”: Hochschild, The Time Bind, 56. The executive added, “It’s going to be a long time before somebody becomes the CEO of a company saying, ‘I’m going to be a wonderfully balanced person’—because there are just too many others who aren’t. The environment here is very competitive.” Hochschild, The Time Bind, 56–57.

  “I don’t think”: Hochschild, The Time Bind, 70.

  The demands on small businesspeople have grown similarly. A detailed study of businesses operating in Dallas, for example, reveals that whereas only 6.8 percent of existing businesses failed in 1970, by the mid-1980s, over 20 percent of existing businesses failed each year. See Louis Richman, “How Jobs Die—and Are Born,” Fortune, July 26, 1993.

  “62% of high-earning individuals”: Hewlett and Luce, “Extreme Jobs.”

  “The majority of them”: Hewlett and Luce, “Extreme Jobs.”

  averaged across four weeks: See Julia Szymczack et al., “To Leave or to Lie? Are Concerns About a Shift-Work Mentality and Eroding Professionalism as a Result of Duty-Hour Rules Justified?,” Milbank Quarterly 88, no. 3 (September 2010): 350–81.

  increased by nearly half: Renée M. Landers, James B. Rebitzer, and Lowell J. Taylor, “Rat Race Redux: Adverse Selection in the Determination of Work Hours in Law Firms,” American Economic Review 86, no. 3 (June 1996): 329–48, 330, citing American Bar Association, Young Lawyers Division, The State of the Legal Profession (American Bar Association, 1991), 22, Table 19. The ABA study reports that in 1984, 4 percent of lawyers worked more than 240 hours a month and 31 percent worked 200 to 239. By 1990, 13 percent worked more than 240 hours a month and 37 percent worked 200 to 239. Hereafter cited as Landers, Rebitzer, and Taylor, “Rat Race Redux.”

  during busy periods: Landers, Rebitzer, and Taylor, “Rat Race Redux,” 337. Other surveys report equivalent results. For example, a University of Michigan School of Law survey of its graduates reports that 70 percent average over fifty hours work per week and over a quarter average over sixty hours. University of Michigan Law School, “Class of 1995 Five Year Report” (2002), accessed August 11, 2018, http://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1145&context=alumni_survey_reports. See also Patrick Schiltz, “On Being a Happy, Healthy, and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession,” Vanderbilt Law Review 52, no. 4 (May 1999): 870–951. Hereafter cited as Schiltz, “An Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession.”

  “work weeks of more”: See Rhode, Balanced Lives, 14; Deborah L. Rhode, In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Cameron Stracher, “Show Me the Misery,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2000, A31; Carl Bogus, “The Death of an Honorable Profession,” Indiana Law Journal 71, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 924, accessed August 8, 2018, www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1802&context=ilj; and Sheila Wellington, “Women in Law: Making the Case,” Women Lawyers Journal 88, no. 2 (Winter 2003): 11–15.

  An anonymous lawyer recently described: Anonymous midlevel/senior associate at a large law firm, “My Typical Day Shows Why Lawyers Are Miserable and Lonely,” Business Insider, November 12, 2013, accessed August 12, 2018, originally posted by Anonymous at “Why are so many lawyers unhappy with their jobs?,” Quora, accessed August 12, 2018, www.quora.com/Attorneys/Why-are-so-many-lawyers-unhappy-with-their-jobs.

  “When you wake up”: Blake Edwards, “Big Firm Burnout and the New Virtual Lawyers,” Bloomberg Law, August 27, 2015, accessed August 12, 2018, https://bol.bna.com/big-firm-burnout-and-the-new-virtual-lawyers/ (reporting on Patrick Murdoch, former associate at Shearman & Sterling).

  “the only quantitative requirement”: See Casey Sullivan, “Law Firm Leaders Weigh In on Partner Dismissals,” Reuters Legal, October 22, 2013, accessed November 18, 2018, https://content.next.westlaw.com/Document/I4d4fcbf03b0411e389b0e1bebc789156/View/FullText.html?contextData=(sc.Default)&transitionType=Default&firstPage=true&bhcp=1.

  did not know that they were happening: See generally C. B. Fry, Life Worth Living: Some Phases of an Englishman (London: Eyr
e & Spottiswoode, 1939).

  famously resisted practicing: Dave McKibben, “Fleming Has Classic Memories of Partnership with McEnroe,” Los Angeles Times, October 1, 1992, accessed September 2, 2018, http://articles.latimes.com/1992-10-01/sports/sp-145_1_tennis-classic [inactive].

  nearly seven hours a day: Dominic Bliss, “Service Charged,” GQ (UK), March 29, 2012, accessed August 12, 2018, www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/gq-sport-rafael-nadal-tennis-fitness-training-tips-workout.

  eighty- to one-hundred-hour weeks: See, e.g., Lynette Pinchess, “How This Nottinghamshire Lad Went from Shippo’s Pub Kitchens to Cooking for Hollywood Stars,” Nottingham Post, October 13, 2017, accessed August 12, 2018, www.nottinghampost.com/whats-on/food-drink/how-nottinghamshire-lad-went-shippos-623239; Guardian readers, “What It’s Like to Work in the Restaurant Industry—Our Readers’ Stories,” Guardian, March 25, 2017, accessed August 12, 2018, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/25/what-its-like-to-work-in-the-restaurant-industry-our-readers-stories.

  “all train like it’s the . . . Olympics”: Brooke Shunatona, “10 Victoria’s Secret Models Reveal How They Really Feel About Their Bodies,” Cosmopolitan, December 15, 2014, accessed August 12, 2018, www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/fashion/a34249/victorias-secret-models-body-image/ (attributing the quoted text to Elsa Hosk). See also Deni Kirkova, “‘I Thought, Oh My God, They Don’t Want Me Here!’: Naomi Campbell on Her Nerves About Her Emotional Return to the Versace Catwalk,” Daily Mail, October 7, 2013, accessed August 12, 2018, www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2443934/I-want-people-know-hard-models-work-Naomi-Campbell-reveals-drank-just-juice-days-Versace-catwalk.html; Radar Staff, “Kendall Jenner: ‘In Reality, I Worked Pretty Hard’ for Modeling Success, ‘Not Trying to Use a Family Name’ to Get Ahead,” Radar Online, November 17, 2014, accessed November 18, 2018, http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2014/11/kendall-jenner-model-career-hard-work-nightline-kim-kardashian/.