Yes, and the most insidious part is that the beneficiaries don't even realize it. Often they genuinely do have talent and work hard, and they didn't get a milli

Yes, and the most insidious part is that the beneficiaries don't even realize it. Often they genuinely do have talent and work hard, and they didn't get a million dollars dropped on them with no strings attached, so they attribute 99% of their success to personal merit. The free housing and transportation, the extra formal and informal instruction, the contacts, the superior nutrition and health care, the freedom from distraction and psychological safety of working with a net - none of those things penetrate their consciousness at all because those weren't blatant easily-counted gifts. They don't realize others don't have those things (all their peers did) or how much that matters. "I still would have succeeded without those" even though it's not true. It's the nature of privilege to hide itself. The correlation is not absolute, of course. There are poor kids who succeed - like me, though even with beginnings that were modest by most standards I was still far luckier than many. There are rich kids who fail. But the relationship is still far stronger than would be allowed in anything we could legitimately call a meritocracy.