The Meritocracy Trap

by Daniel Markovits

  equity partners at American law firms: American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession, A Current Glance at Women in the Law: January 2017 (2017), www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/marketing/women/current_glance_statistics_january2017.authcheckdam.pdf.

  has widened in recent years: A. T. Lo Sasso et al., “The $16,819 Pay Gap for Newly Trained Physicians: The Unexplained Trend of Men Earning More Than Women,” Health Affairs 30, no. 2 (February 2018): 193–201.

  bearing (let alone raising) children: Claudia Goldin, “A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter,” American Economic Review 104, no. 4 (2014): 1–30; and Carbone and Cahn, “Unequal Terms.”

  delay childbirth and remain in the workforce: Clare Cain Miller, “Freezing Eggs as Part of Employee Benefits: Some Women See Darker Message,” New York Times, October 14, 2014, accessed November 19, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/upshot/egg-freezing-as-a-work-benefit-some-women-see-darker-message.html.

  conventionally done by middle-class women: Carbone and Cahn, “Unequal Terms”; and Michelle Rendall, “The Service Sector and Female Market Work: Europe vs. U.S.,” working paper, University of Zurich, January 22, 2013, www.economicdynamics.org/meetpapers/2013/paper_1202.pdf.

  declining wages for men without a college degree: Carbone and Cahn, “Unequal Terms,” 191.

  with annual incomes below $30,000: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Postsecondary Student Aid Studies, 1995–96, 1999–2000, 2003–4. All incomes are in 1996 dollars. By contrast, men make up 49 percent of college students from households with incomes above $70,000. Carbone and Cahn, “Unequal Terms”; and Mary Beth Marklein, “College Gender Gap Widens: 57% Are Women,” USA Today, October 19, 2005.

  the no-longer adequacy of the male wage: Williams, White Working Class, 76.

  falling among the middle class and the poor: Carbone and Cahn, “Unequal Terms.”

  wives out-earn their husbands: Carbone and Cahn, “Unequal Terms”; and Sarah Jane Glynn, “Breadwinning Mothers Are Increasingly the U.S. Norm,” Center for American Progress, December 19, 2016, www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2016/12/19/295203/breadwinning-mothers-are-increasingly-the-u-s-norm.

  the bottom of the economic distribution: Claire Cain Miller and Quoctrung Bui, “Equality in Marriages Grows, and So Does Class Divide,” New York Times, February 27, 2016, accessed November 19, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/upshot/rise-in-marriages-of-equals-and-in-division-by-class.html; and Marianne Bertrand, Jessica Pan, and Emir Kamenica, “Gender Identity and Relative Income Within Households,” NBER Working Paper No. 19023 (May 2013), www.nber.org/papers/w19023.

  feels distant and almost academic: John Morley brought this difference to my attention.

  “love and work”: There is a controversy as to whether Freud ever actually said this quote that is so often attributed to him. The first recorded public attribution to Freud appeared in a book of psychoanalysis called Childhood and Society published by German-American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in 1950. Even in its first appearance, the attribution is already secondhand. “Freud was once asked what he thought a normal person should be able to do well. . . . Freud, in the curt way of his old days, is reported to have said: ‘Lieben und arbeiten’ (to love and to work).” Later in 1982, when asked in an interview, Erikson said of the quote, “I heard it in Vienna and it impressed me. I’ve never seen it in print. And some people now have said I made it up. If I did, I’m proud.” Alan C. Elms, “Apocryphal Freud: Sigmund Freud’s Most Famous ‘Quotations’ and Their Actual Sources,” in Annual of Psychoanalysis, vol. 29: Sigmund Freud and His Impact on the Modern World, ed. Jerome A. Winer and James W. Anderson (Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press 2001).

  Anglicans/Episcopalians, Jews, and Hindus: Murphy, “The Most and Least Educated U.S. Religious Groups”; Masci, “How Income Varies Among U.S. Religious Groups.”

  By contrast, Jehovah’s Witnesses: Murphy, “The Most and Least Educated U.S. Religious Groups”; Masci, “How Income Varies Among U.S. Religious Groups.”

  Interestingly, Catholics: Murphy, “The Most and Least Educated U.S. Religious Groups”; Masci, “How Income Varies Among U.S. Religious Groups.”

  “Morally, I’m a Democrat”: Thomas Edsall, “How the Other Fifth Lives,” New York Times, April 27, 2016, accessed November 19, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/opinion/campaign-stops/how-the-other-fifth-lives.html. Hereafter cited as Edsall, “How the Other Fifth Lives.”

  Most broadly stated: Andrew Gelman, Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 106; Benjamin Page, Larry Bartels, and Jason Sea-wright, “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans,” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 1 (March 2013): 52. Hereafter cited as Page, Bartels, and Seawright, “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans.” See also Benjamin Page and Cari Hennessy, “What Affluent Americans Want from Politics,” APSA annual meeting, Washington, DC, September 2–5, 2010 (Working Paper 11-08, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University). Hereafter cited as Page and Hennessy, “What Affluent Americans Want from Politics.”

  A meta-study of hundreds: Page, Bartels, and Seawright, “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans,” 52, quoting Martin Gilens, “Preference Gaps and Inequality in Representation,” PS: Political Science and Politics 42, no. 2 (April 2009): 335–41. Hereafter cited as Gilens, “Preference Gaps and Inequality in Representation.” Gilens tested and found significant difference in opinion between the two groups on the following policy positions: “Approve the abortion pill RU-486; Federal funding for abortions (for low-income women); Require biological father’s notification/approval for abortion; Legalize gay marriage; Teach creationism in publish schools; and Fund stem cell research from newly created embryos.”

  hold “consistently liberal” views: “A Wider Ideological Gap Between More and Less Educated Adults,” Pew Research Center, April 26, 2016, www.people-press.org/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults; Neil Gross, “Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?,” New York Times, May 13, 2016, accessed November 19, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/why-are-the-highly-educated-so-liberal.html.

  The Phillips Exeter survey: Edsall, “How the Other Fifth Lives.”

  Finally, a pilot study: Page, Bartels, and Seawright, “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans,” 53. Of the sample, 32.4 percent had incomes greater than $1 million, and the median wealth was $7.5 million.

  Another careful study, this time of Americans in the top tenth of the income distribution, confirms that they are “more liberal [than less rich Americans] on issues like abortion, gay rights, and foreign aid.” Gilens, Affluence and Influence, 5. More specifically, when compared to median Americans, rich Americans were substantially more likely to favor approving emergency contraception and to oppose banning abortions, substantially more likely to favor stem cell research, substantially more likely to favor same-sex marriage and permitting openly gay Americans to serve in the military, and substantially less likely to favor a constitutional amendment permitting school prayer or (in the 1980s) mandatory AIDS testing of all citizens. Yet another study exploited transitory idiosyncrasies in certain administrations of the General Social Survey to identify a similarly distinctive social liberality among Americans in the top 4 percent of the income distribution. According to this study, the top 4 percent were much more likely to support abortion, allowing atheists and communists to “make a speech in public” and teach and write books, and, interestingly, funding for space exploration. Page and Hennessy, “What Affluent Americans Want from Politics,” 16.

  social welfare spending: For example, wealthier Americans are more likely to support time limits on welfare receipt, to support cutting the top marginal tax rate as well as the capital gains and estate taxes, and to disfavor a universal health care plan. P
age, Bartels, and Seawright, “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans,” 52, quoting Gilens, “Preference Gaps and Inequality in Representation.”

  government regulation of corporations and industry: Gilens, Affluence and Influence, 114.

  as on social ones: Edsall, “How the Other Fifth Lives.”

  the most pressing issue: Page, Bartels, and Seawright, “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans,” 55–56, 59–60, 64.

  in particular Social Security: Page, Bartels, and Seawright, “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Ameri-cans,” 65.

  $180,000 at the time of the study: See Chapter 6.

  less equality-minded than typical Americans: Ray Fisman, Shachar Kariv, and Daniel Markovits, “The Distributional Preferences of an Elite,” Science 349, no. 6254 (September 2015).

  professed motivations to make money or to gain knowledge: The one exception to this rule is that being African American more powerfully predicts rejecting economic conservatism than attending a school with a poorer student body. Tali Mendelberg et al., “College Socialization and the Economic Views of Affluent Americans,” American Journal of Political Science 61, no. 3 (July 2017): 606–23.

  progressive views on social questions: The locus classicus is Theodore M. Newcomb, Personality and Social Change: Attitude Formation in a Student Community (New York: Dryden, 1943).

  “greater attraction of the free market to the affluent”: Gilens, Affluence and Influence, 116.

  “Silicon Valley is a meritocracy”: Andy Reinhardt, “How It Really Works,” Business Week, August 25, 1997. The article goes on to quote Jobs as saying, “It doesn’t matter what you wear. It doesn’t matter how old you are. What matters is how smart you are.”

  its aggressive pursuit of wealth: Charles D. Ellis, “Goldman Sachs’ Secret to Success Under Siege,” Institutional Investor, August 8, 2013, accessed November 19, 2018, www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b14zb9rlghm8l7/goldman-sachs-secret-to-success-under-siege. Ellis describes an “impatient” shift in the culture in the 1980s to make Goldman Sachs the premier leader in global finance: “In the past it was all about clients; now it was about accounts and counterparties, and terminology turned toward locker-room crudeness. . . . The securities business was changing rapidly, and Goldman Sachs was changing even more rapidly so its skillful, driven people could stay ahead of the curve of change and excel at making money.”

  oppose unions among its staff and graduate students: Peter Salovey, Promoting Diversity and Equal Opportunity at Yale University: 2016–2017, Yale University, 2, https://student-dhr.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/YEO.pdf; Yuki Noguchi, “At Yale, Protests Mark a Fight to Recognize Union for Grad Students,” National Public Radio, June 16, 2017, www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/06/16/532774267/at-yale-protests-mark-a-fight-to-recognize-union-for-grad-students; and Markeshia Ricks, “Yale Cops Threaten Strike,” New Haven Independent, September 6, 2018, accessed November 19, 2018, https://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/yale_police_union_threatens_strike.

  whose incomes fall below $20,000: “Nice Work If You Can Get Out,” The Economist, April 19, 2014, accessed November 19, 2018, www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21600989-why-rich-now-have-less-leisure-poor-nice-work-if-you-can-get-out?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/nicework.

  more educated men: Mark Aguiar and Erik Hurst, The Increase in Leisure Inequality: 1965–2005 (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 2009), 46, www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/-increase-in-leisure-inequality_095714451042.pdf.

  fitness has become a status symbol: “Spin to Separate,” The Economist, August 1, 2015, accessed November 19, 2018, www.economist.com/news/united-states/21660170-sweating-purpose-becoming-elite-phenomenon-spin-separate.

  than in the top: Emily C. Bianchi and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Social Class and Social Worlds: Income Predicts the Frequency and Nature of Social Contact,” Social Psychology and Personality Science 7, no. 5 (2016): 479–86; and Christopher Ingraham, “The Social Lives of Rich People, Explained,” Washington Post, May 12, 2016, accessed November 19, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/12/how-money-changes-everything-even-your-friendships/?utm_term=.5475a807dc28.

  “rooted self”: The quoted language comes from Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land, 166. See also “Why the White Working Class Voted for Trump,” interview with Joan C. Williams.

  family and long-standing friends: See Joan C. Williams, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 171–73. Williams cites Marjorie L. Devault, Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 208–12. See also Williams, White Working Class.

  straightforward and direct: “Why the White Working Class Voted for Trump,” interview with Joan C. Williams.

  chronic ailments, guns, and religion: See David Leonhardt, “In One America, Guns and Diet. In the Other, Cameras and ‘Zoolander,’” New York Times, August 18, 2014, accessed July 19, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/upshot/inequality-and-web-search-trends.html. See also Chapter 3.

  the Wargaming and Roleplaying Society: Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land, 19.

  from which they buy all these things: These categories closely track the classification that Consumer Reports uses to organize its product reviews. “Products A–Z,” Consumer Reports, accessed October 7, 2018, www.consumerreports.org/cro/a-to-z-index/products/index.htm.

  nearly 70 percent of GDP: Maggie C. Woodward, “The U.S. Economy to 2022: Settling into a New Normal,” Monthly Labor Review, December 2013, https://doi.org/10.21916/mlr.2013.43.

  now reveal more about her income than about her race: Marianne Bertrand and Emir Kamenica, “Coming Apart? Cultural Distances in the United States over Time,” NBER Working Paper No. 24771 (2018), www.nber.org/papers/w24771. Hereafter cited as Bertrand and Kamenica, “Coming Apart? Cultural Distances in the United States over Time.” See also Andrew Van Dam, “What We Buy Can Be Used to Predict Our Politics, Race or Education—Sometimes with More Than 90 Percent Accuracy,” Washington Post, July 9, 2018, accessed November 19, 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/07/10/rich-people-prefer-grey-poupon-white-people-own-pets-data-behind-cultural-divide/?utm_term=.75e85beb6d56.

  Interpreting the study is a complicated matter. The authors conclude that “our headline result is that for all other demographic divisions and cultural dimensions [besides political ideology], cultural distance has been broadly constant over time.” Bertrand and Kamenica, “Coming Apart? Cultural Distances in the United States over Time.” But neither the paper’s data nor its methods really support this conclusion, at least in an interesting way. First, the data series does not go back far enough. The consumption data, for example, begins in the mid-1990s. The interesting comparison, however, is between the present day and the 1950s. Second, the paper’s analytic method does not allow for a scalar measure of cultural distance. The authors ask only whether machine learning can use consumer data inputs to predict income. They do not ask how great the differences between consumption patterns are, nor do they even propose a way to measure these differences.

  the pinnacle of the elite: All others held land not directly as sovereigns but rather through the legal fiction of an “estate in land,” which conveyed rights to occupy, use, and profit from land even as the land itself remained formally under the sovereign’s ultimate control. The fiction remains in place to this day, and the power of eminent domain may be formalized as the sovereign’s right to reoccupy its land, while compensating the owner for the value of the “estate” of which the sovereign deprives him. S. F. C. Milson, “Proprietary Ideas,” in The Legal Framework of English Feudalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 36–64.

  eating opulent foods: N. B. Harte, “State Control of Dress and Social Change in Pre-Industrial England,” in Trade, Government, and Economy in Pr
e-industrial England, ed. D. C. Coleman and A. H. John (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), 132–65.

  commercial rather than aristocratic wealth: Herman Freudenberger, “Fashion, Sumptuary Laws, and Business,” Business History Review 37, no. 1–2 (1963): 39–41.

  from 44 percent in 1940 to 63 percent by 1970: 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.

  no further substantial increase since then: 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.

  widely dispersed throughout the middle class: See Chapter 1.

  a proprietary Sears credit card: “Sears, Roebuck & Co.,” AdAge Encyclopedia, September 15, 2003, accessed November 19, 2018, https://adage.com/article/adage-encyclopedia/sears-roebuck/98873; and Gordon L. Weil, Sears, Roebuck, U.S.A. (New York: Stein & Day, 1977), 146.

  able to afford them: Henry Ford, Today and Tomorrow (London: William Heinemann 1926), 152. Hereafter cited as Ford, Today and Tomorrow.

  at the very top of the distribution: Aguiar and Bils, “Has Consumption Inequality Mirrored Income Inequality?”

  revenue growth in recent years: See Dollar General Corporation, “DG’s Revenue Growth by Quarter and Year,” CSIMarket.com, accessed November 19, 2018, http://csimarket.com/stocks/single_growth_rates.php?code=DG&rev, and Family Dollar Stores, Inc., “FDO’s Revenue Growth by Quarter and Year,” CSIMarket.com, accessed November 19, 2018, http://csimarket.com/stocks/single_growth_rates.php?code=FDO&rev.

  less downmarket big-box stores like Target: These relationships are calculated using data on incomes for shoppers at Family Dollar, Dollar General, Walmart, and Target, reported in Hayley Petersen, “Meet the Average Walmart Shopper,” Business Insider, September 18, 2004, accessed November 19, 2018, www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-average-wal-mart-shopper-2014-9.