The Meritocracy Trap

by Daniel Markovits

  top lawyers, bankers, managers, and so on: Saez, “Reported Incomes and Marginal Tax Rates,” 155–56, Figure 6 [top 10 percent], 156, Figure 7 [top 1 percent], 158, Figure 8 [top 0.01 percent]. Another related study thus concludes that “the increase in top income shares in the last three decades is the direct consequence of the surge in top wages.” Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118, no. 1 (February 2003): 3.

  elite labor income: Saez, “Reported Incomes and Marginal Tax Rates,” 158, Figure 8 (calculation from the figure, following the practice noted earlier of treating 70 percent of profits from S-corporations, partnerships, and sole proprietorships as labor income).

  an open letter: Mark Zuckerberg, “A Letter to Our Daughter,” Facebook, December 1, 2015, www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-letter-to-our-daughter/10153375081581634/. When Zuckerberg wrote the letter, he was the sixth-richest person in the world. Kerry A. Dolan and Luisa Kroll, “Forbes 2016 World’s Billionaires: Meet the Richest People on the Planet,” Forbes, March 1, 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2016/03/01/forbes-2016-worlds-billionaires-meet-the-richest-people-on-the-planet/#5d8c660277dc.

  “advance human potential”: Zuckerberg, “A Letter to Our Daughter.”

  constituted social status: For a similar point, see John Langbein, “The Twentieth-Century Revolution in Family Wealth Transmission,” Michigan Law Review 86 (February 1988): 722–51. Hereafter cited as Langbein, “Twentieth-Century Revolution.”

  govern dynastic succession: “The right of the father to dispose of his property, when given to him and the heirs of his body, depended upon his first having a son, who was capable of the inheritance.” Charles Neate, The History and Uses of the Law of Entail and Settlement 7 (London: W. Ridgway, 1865).

  Blenheim Palace: The example is chosen because this dukedom, exceptionally, can pass through the female line, and the current holders of the title do trace their succession to this contingency. Noel Cox, “Property Law, Imperial and British Titles: The Duke of Marlborough and the Principality of Mindelheim,” Legal History Review 77, no. 1–2 (2009): 193, https://doi.org/10.1163/004075809X403433.

  the entire aristocratic order: It might even, eventually, have dissolved the family title. Moreover, even these consequences would have followed only if the regnant legal order governing titles and property permitted the divestiture at all, rather than entailing the estate to guarantee that it remained in the family. See Langbein, “Twentieth-Century Revolution,” 725–26.

  upon their deaths: “History of the Pledge,” The Giving Pledge, accessed October 12, 2018, https://givingpledge.org. Signatories include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg, all in the top ten of 2018’s Forbes 400. Kroll and Dolan, “Forbes 400.”

  An advertisement for the Wall Street Journal: “People who don’t have time make time to read the Wall Street Journal,” Wall Street Journal, accessed October 12, 2018, www.wsj.com/maketime.

  When law students were recently asked: This is reported in an unpublished early draft of Heather Kappes et al., “‘Who You Are’ Heightens Entitlement More Than ‘What you Did’” (manuscript on file with author).

  more important than studying: Stephanie Addenbrooke and Emma Platoff, “2019 by the Numbers: First Impressions,” Yale Daily News, August 28, 2018, accessed November 18, 2018, http://features.yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/08/28/2019-by-the-numbers-first-impressions/.

  In 2016, the Yale College Council Health Task Force found that the average Yale student slept only 6.7 hours on a weekday and that more than 10 percent of students slept less than 5 hours on average on a weekday. Paddy Gavin, “UP CLOSE: Unhealthy Sleep Culture at Yale,” Yale Daily News, September 9, 2016, accessed November 18, 2018, http://features.yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/09/09/up-close-unhealthy-sleep-culture-at-yale/. Similarly, a 2014 Harvard University Health Services Assessment survey of two thousand Harvard undergraduate students found that 10 percent of students reported getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night on average and that a full two-thirds of students averaged just 6–7 hours of sleep a night. Quynh-Nhu Le and Zara Zhang, “The State of the Student Body,” Harvard Crimson, November 11, 2014, accessed November 18, 2018, www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/11/11/state-of-the-student-body/.

  self-identify as workaholics: Golden, “A Brief History of Long Work Time,” 223 (citing Daniel S. Hamermesh and Joel Slemrod, “The Economics of Workaholism: We Should Not Have Worked on This Paper,” NBER Working Paper No. 11566 [2005], www.nber.org/papers/w11566).

  “whatever it takes to get things done”: Ho, Liquidated, 103.

  “wear their commitments”: Hewlett and Luce, “Extreme Jobs.”

  “shouldn’t wear suspenders”: Ho, Liquidated, 73.

  Exploit has been reconstituted: Gershuny, “Busyness as the Badge of Honor,” 296. Gershuny attributes this point to Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984).

  Even celebrity—fame for its own sake: Kim Kardashian, for example, has stated, “The biggest misconception about my family and me is that we’re lazy. . . . I work hard; the show is a full-time job. Sometimes, I don’t think people realise that—we work 7am until 7pm on the programme.” Ella Alexander, “How Alaïa and Valentino Inspired the Kardashians’ Lipsy Collection,” Vogue UK, October 21, 2013, accessed November 18, 2018, www.vogue.co.uk/gallery/kardashians-lipsy-collection-launches-kim-kardashian-interview.

  a disciplinary tool: Elaine K. Yakura, “Billables: The Valorization of Time in Consulting,” American Behavioral Scientist 44, no. 7 (March 1, 2001): 1090, https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764201044007003.

  “the right to expect”: Schiltz, “An Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession,” 942.

  “a fair trade”: Schor, The Overworked American, 140.

  “pay us lots and lots”: Jeanne M. Brett and Linda K. Stroh, “Working 61 Plus Hours a Week: Why Do Managers Do It?,” Journal of Applied Psychology 88, no. 1 (February 2003): 76, https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.67.

  “consider their over-the-top efforts”: Hewlett and Luce, “Extreme Jobs.”

  “just deserts” of their industry: N. Gregory Mankiw, “Spreading the Wealth Around: Reflections Inspired by Joe the Plumber,” Eastern Economic Journal 36, no. 3 (2010): 295, https://doi.org/10.3386/w15846; N. Gregory Mankiw, “Defending the One Percent,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 32–33, https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.27.3.21. See also N. Gregory Mankiw, “Yes, the Wealthy Can Be Deserving,” New York Times, February 15, 2014, accessed November 18, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/business/yes-the-wealthy-can-be-deserving.html.

  “outside [non-elite] world”: Ho, Liquidated, 103. Ho adds that even the banks’ own back-office workers were disrespected on account of their shorter work hours: “To say that Wall Street had little respect for back-office workers is an understatement. Although they were not openly disparaged, they were casually dubbed career nine-to-fivers; their work ethic was questioned, as was their smartness, drive, and innovation.” Ho, Liquidated, 17.

  raising Social Security’s retirement age: Jordan Weissmann, “The Head of Goldman Sachs Wants to Raise Your Retirement Age,” Atlantic, November 20, 2012, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/the-head-of-goldman-sachs-wants-to-raise-your-retirement-age/265475/.

  “the badge of honor”: Gershuny, “Busyness as the Badge of Honor.” See also Golden, “A Brief History of Long Work Time,” 222 (citing Fredrik Carlsson, Olof Johansson-Stenman, and Peter Martinsson, “Do You Enjoy Having More Than Others? Survey Evidence of Positional Goods,” Economica 84, no. 296 (November 2007), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0335.2006.00571.x).

  The social order that Veblen discerned: In a “remarkable historical reversal” that exchanges Veblen’s social world for its polar opposite, “‘being busy�
�� [has] replaced leisure as a sign of social status.” Jacobs and Gerson, The Time Divide, 120. See also Gershuny, “Busyness as the Badge of Honor,” 306–7.

  “was, after all”: Gershuny, “Busyness as the Badge of Honor,” 290–91 (emphasis removed).

  a “collaboration between”: Fraser, Every Man a Speculator, 476.

  The median real income: In nominal dollars, individual income for men stood at $2,230 in 1947 and $5,553 in 1967. U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Income Tables: People,” Current Population Survey, last modified August 28, 2018, accessed October 11, 2018, Table P-2, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-people.html.

  the number of American households: The homeownership rate stood at 43.6 percent in 1940 and 61.9 percent in 1960. U.S. Census Bureau, Census of Housing, “Historical Census of Housing Tables: Homeownership,” last modified October 31, 2011, www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/owner.html.

  “voiceless minority”: See Galbraith, The Affluent Society, 79.

  Harrington was a graduate: Maurice Isserman, The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington (New York: Perseus, 2000), 154. Hereafter cited as Isserman, The Other American.

  “the only responsible radical in America”: Isserman, The Other American, 219.

  the circumstances of America’s poor: Isserman, The Other American, 175–220.

  “alarming . . . pockets of despair”: Herbert Mitgang, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, March 21, 1962, accessed November 18, 2018, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/03/21/83217578.pdf.

  “the minimal levels of health”: Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997 [originally published in 1962 by Macmillan]), 179. Hereafter cited as Harrington, The Other America.

  “angry thesis”: A. H. Raskin, “The Unknown and Unseen,” New York Times, April 8, 1962, accessed November 18, 2018, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/04/08/113424067.pdf.

  Harrington claimed that: Harrington, The Other America, 190.

  still lived in poverty: Robert D. 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, 57, www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/dps/pdfs/dp116698.pdf. While no official statistics exist for the poverty rate before the 1960s, one estimate in 1955 was 26.2 percent. In 1959, the earliest year in the Census Bureau’s Official Poverty Measure time series, the official poverty rate remained 22.4 percent. For complete historical data on the Official Poverty Measure, see U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Poverty Tables: People and Families—1959 to 2017,” Current Population Survey, last modified August 28, 2018, Table 3, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html.

  “I would beg the reader”: Harringon, The Other America, 191.

  “an American Dickens”: Harrington, The Other America, 17.

  “no telephone in the house”: Gabriel Kolko, Wealth and Power in America: An Analysis of Social Class and Income Distribution (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1962), 98.

  no broader impact: Isserman, The Other American, 198–208.

  soon after publication: Isserman, The Other American, 198–208.

  “Our Invisible Poor”: Dwight Macdonald, “Our Invisible Poor,” New Yorker, January 19, 1963, accessed November 18, 2018, www.newyorker.com/magazine/1963/01/19/our-invisible-poor.

  in the magazine’s history: Isserman, The Other American, 208.

  “more widely read”: Carl M. Brauer, “Kennedy, Johnson, and the War on Poverty,” Journal of American History 69, no. 1 (June 1982): 103, https://doi.org/10.2307/1887754. Hereafter cited as Brauer, “Kennedy.”

  to the president himself: Peter Dreier, “How Rachel Carson and Michael Harrington Changed the World,” Contexts 11, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 44, https://doi.org/10.1177/1536504212446459. It is difficult to be certain of whether President Kennedy saw the book or the review; historians tell both versions.

  “that The Other America helped”: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 1010.

  “widely assumed in Washington”: Isserman, The Other American, 208.

  “outskirts of poverty”: Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, 1 Pub. Papers 13 (January 14, 1963).

  “Poverty in the midst”: Letter to the President of the Senate and to the Speaker of the House Proposing the Establishment of a National Service Corps, 1 Pub. Papers 320 (April 10, 1963).

  how could a society: This formulation loosely follows one of John Rawls’s main lines of argument in John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971).

  1964 legislative program: Byron G. Lander, “Group Theory and Individuals: The Origin of Poverty as a Political Issue in 1964,” Western Political Quarterly 24, no. 3 (September 1971): 524, https://doi.org/10.2307/446920. Hereafter cited as Lander, “Group Theory.”

  the newly sworn-in President Johnson: Lander, “Group Theory,” 524.

  The program appealed: Brauer, “Kennedy,” 114. Johnson was eager to disabuse Kennedy’s advisers of the view that he was a fiscal conservative.

  “carry on the fight”: Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress, 1 Pub. Papers 9 (November 27, 1963).

  The popular press: Lander, “Group Theory,” 524, citing James Reston, “Washington: On Exploring the Moon and Attacking the Slums,” New York Times, December 20, 1963, accessed November 18, 2018, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/12/20/89995256.pdf; Editorial, “Assault on Poverty,” New York Times, December 30, 1963, accessed November 18, 2018, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/12/30/81832524.pdf; Editorial, “Price of Poverty,” New York Times, January 3, 1964, accessed November 18, 2018, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1964/01/03/118649586.pdf; and James Reston, “A Modified New Deal,” New York Times, January 9, 1964, accessed November 18, 2018, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1964/01/09/106931619.pdf.

  “unconditional War on Poverty in America”: Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, 1 Pub. Papers 114 (January 8, 1964). For another version of the story, see Brauer, “Kennedy.”

  poverty has worsened in recent years: There are many reasons for this. But one important reason is that transfer programs have both shrunk and, additionally, lost some of their initial focus on the poor. Whereas households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution received 54 percent of all federal transfer payments in 1979, their share had fallen to 36 percent by 2007. See Congressional Budget Office, “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income.” Nevertheless, economic growth renders relatively reduced redistribution consistent with stable or falling absolute poverty.

  11.1 percent in 1973: U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Poverty Tables: People and Families—1959 to 2017,” Current Population Survey, last modified August 28, 2018, Table 3, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html.

  between 11 and 15 percent since then: U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Poverty Tables: People and Families—1959 to 2017,” Current Population Survey, last modified August 28, 2018, Table 3, www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html. Poverty rose to slightly over 15 percent in the early 1980s and fell slightly toward the end of that decade. Poverty rates then rose above 15 percent again in the early 1990s before falling back down to a little over 11 percent in 2000, rising through the Bush years and the Great Recession, and then falling again, slightly, to 12.3 percent in 2017.

  Additional statistics confirm this impression about income poverty, as a kind of reality check. According to a 2007 CBO study, after-tax annual income for the bottom quintile grew
by 6 percent between 1979 and 2005. See David A. Zalewski and Charles J. Whalen, “Financialization and Income Inequality: A Post Keynesian Institutional Analysis,” Journal of Economic Issues 44, no. 3 (2010): 757, https://doi.org/10.2753/JEI0021-3624440309. Another study that adjusts the income of the poor to take into account government transfers, health insurance paid for by others, and the decline in household size found that the real income of the bottom quintile grew by 26.4 percent between 1979 and 2007. See Richard Burkhauser, Jeff Larrimore, and Kosali I. Simon, “A ‘Second Opinion’ on the Economic Health of the American Middle Class,” National Tax Journal 65, no. 1 (March 2012): 23, https://dx.doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2012.1.01.

  Supplemental Poverty Measure: Trudi Renwick, “What Is the Supplemental Poverty Measure and How Does It Differ from the Official Measure?,” U.S. Census Bureau, Census Blogs, November 8, 2012, www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2012/11/what-is-the-supplemental-poverty-measure-and-how-does-it-differ-from-the-official-measure.html. As compared to the Official Poverty Measure, the Supplemental Poverty Measure increases both the poverty threshold and the resource measure of the poor. Very roughly, the new measure makes modest changes in the composition of household units, sets the poverty threshold at 1.2 times the 33rd-percentile expenditure on food, clothing, shelter, and utilities of households with exactly two children, makes geographic adjustments for cost of living, changes the formula for updating for inflation, and changes the resource measure to include in-kind benefits (such as nutritional assistance, subsidized housing, and home energy assistance) and exclude taxes, work expenses, and medical expenses.

  substantially more than the Official Measure: The Supplemental Measure reports that poverty has fallen from 25.8 percent in 1967 to 14.3 percent in 2015—an 11.5 percent drop, versus effectively no secular decline in the Official Poverty Measure over these years (as the real decline in poverty according to the Official Measure came between 1959 and 1967). See Trudi Renwick and Liana Fox, The Supplemental Poverty Measure: 2015, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports no. P60-258 (September 2016), accessed October 24, 2018, www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-258.pdf. See also Christopher Wimer et al., “Trends in Poverty with an Anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure,” Columbia Population Center Working Paper no. 13-01 (December 5, 2013), Columbia Population Research Center, New York, NY, Figure 2, https://doi.org/10.7916/D8RN3853.