9 ms·

America’s elite: An hereditary meritocracy

119 points by bootload 12y ago

bootload 12y ago
source <https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264> https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264>
- willvarfar 12y ago
  Glad you put the Paul Graham endorsement here; this story was mysteriously flagged off the front page yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8930360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8930360 links to this version of the story: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-intellectual-capital-grows-privilege-has-become-increasingly http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-in...
  - bootload 12y ago
    didn't check yesterdays page. This is one example where the site fails, changed url, same title (update: wrong) and where the poster (me) has to check. If you notice the a) compared to b) notice there are no graphs. ... read a bit more: B) has been re-edited down from print A) and re-purposed. I had to re-read both to see B) is a re-write. Even the sub-heading are changed. I do believe B) is an inferior version of A). A) America’s elite: An hereditary meritocracy http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21640316-children-rich-and-powerful-are-increasingly-well-suited-earning-wealth-and-power http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21640316-children-ric... B) America’s new aristocracy http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-intellectual-capital-grows-privilege-has-become-increasingly http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-in...
    - davidw 12y ago
      The Economist has lead editorials, and then more in-depth articles. B) is a leader (you can even see it in the URL), A) is the more in-depth article. You can see them both listed here: http://www.economist.com/printedition/2015-01-24 http://www.economist.com/printedition/2015-01-24 I think that they make a lot of good points, and think it's a good article (I subscribe to The Economist), but also think it's primarily a political subject and discussion.
      - bootload 12y ago
        Thank you David, I'm not a Economist reader so this clears up the confusion on my behalf.
- blfr 12y ago
  HN doesn't interpret <> correctly. Here https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264
  - bootload 12y ago
    thx @blfr
jballanc 12y ago
For millennia, being "elite" meant owning land. In a primarily agrarian society, owning land is a huge advantage. So then, if that land is passed along hereditary lines, the establishment of a "landed aristocracy" is inevitable. The risk in "meritocracy" is that we no longer live in an agrarian society. In the modern economy skills, training, and education are the surest means to success. We've replaced the "landed aristocracy" with the "educated aristocracy". This could only be considered a meritocracy if the potential to become educated was equally available to all, but the situation in America is further from that ideal than almost any other place in the world.
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  >In the modern economy skills, training, and education are the surest means to success. Nope. Still land: http://mattbruenig.com/2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a-college-degree-or-being-born-rich/ http://mattbruenig.com/2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a-col... actually it was never just land either. It used to be about owning land, debts, gold and slaves Now it's about owning land, debts (bonds), gold and shares.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    I can't find numbers on how many Americans own homes, but 67% of homes are occupied by their owner. That's quite a large aristocracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_St... 52% own stocks. http://www.gallup.com/poll/162353/stock-ownership-stays-record-low.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/162353/stock-ownership-stays-reco... I'm too lazy to google bonds and gold (both easily available to anyone with a brokerage account). The means to success seem pretty accessible based on these numbers.
    - hkmurakami 12y ago
      Perhaps share of land / stocks / debts owned may be a better metric. Also, home ownership should be replaced with home equity ownership.
    - 12y ago
jokoon 12y ago
> they meet the standards of meritocracy better than their peers, and are thus worthy of the status they inherit. Or maybe the education system ended up being tailored for well minded people, and not for the others ? Education involves a lot of human interaction, it's pretty difficult to teach and learn. > Neither has plausible ideas for what to do about it. The purpose of education, in my mind, is to lift people out of poverty by just teaching them a job that their parents don't have any relationship with, and will never have. If you put competition in something that is made to reduce inequality, you will be disappointed. Maybe expensive schools should be taxed to fund more public schools too. There's a student loan bubble, so why not tax it to fund community colleges ? To be honest, I live in france, I think the problem with the US education system is what the education quality students are exposed to from age of 8 to 16. I think it's very heterogeneous in the US, and that might be the source of the problem.
alkonaut 12y ago
A lot of the problems with social mobility in the US could be solved if universities didn't get to handle their own admissions. Interviews and "letters of application" are just a way to let wealthy sponsors get their kids into the best education. Why not just say universities either hand over their admission to a central agency OR agree to base all admission on objective parameters like standardized tests or grades?
- wyclif 12y ago
  Why in the world would a university give up control over something as important as admissions to a third party?
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    If lawmakers believed such a law would help the political goal of improving social mobility and true meritocracy (rather than hereditary) then such a law would pass, and universities would simply have to follow it. To answer your question, they wouldn't give that right up but rather have it revoked.
    - _0ffh 12y ago
      Or you live in a country where Universities are historically publicly founded and funded to begin with. That what it is like in my country. There are also a few private Universities here, but those are not bound to all the same rules as the public ones.
- mantas 12y ago
  My country uses exact system that you're suggesting and I am jealous of US system of interviews and letters of application. Over there, potential students submit their high school performance reports to a centralised system and select programmes they want to study. Then system selects students based purely on their academical performance. It includes high school exam and average grades at final year of high school. Few top performers in each programme get all expenses paid, a bunch of good-but-not-best get partial coverage. All seems good on paper, but it gets nasty during the last few years at high school. People do whatever they can to increase their grades. Including cheating, manipulating teachers and so on. In addition to that, people learn solely for the exams. Instead of gathering general knowledge, previous exams are studied to prepare for questions that may be in the upcoming exam. So it's either studying for grades or paying for studies. Another problem is that some people graduate with the best grades and don't know what they want to do. But they're pretty sure to get a free spot thanks to good grades. They apply for random programme that has a cool title. Sometimes they end up enjoying it, sometimes they just sit through it and end up working in a different field. While people who were genuinely interested in that subject, but had lower grades, may not get even a paid spot. It may be grass-is-greener thingie, but interviews and letters of application seem to be much better way. Grades do not show if particular person is a good fit for the specific programme. Different schools/teachers rate their students a bit differently as well.
WalterBright 12y ago
> Caltech, a university which admits purely on academic ability, has more Asian students than other elite schools. Caltech is unique in other ways - it's the only university with an honor system top to bottom.
WalterBright 12y ago
Unsaid in the article: 1. 85% of America's millionaires are self-made ("The Millionaire Next Door" by Stanley) 2. there's never been more free opportunities for self-education, from the Khan Academy to MIT lectures free online.
- doikor 12y ago
  Sad thing is that you no longer are the kind of elite talked in this article by just having a few millions. The real american elite has assets in the hundreds of millions or billions.
- pizza234 12y ago
  This line of thinking is the same as Will Hunting say that you can get a Harvard education for 1.50$ in fees at the public library. Education is a wide-scope issue; availability is only part of the equation. It's easy to perceive education as "immediate" from the middle/upper class point of view, but it's not so immediate in reality for families living on food stamps and/or multiple jobs, and/or with relatives in jail, and/or having children going to schools with high crime rates and/or poor teachers, and so on. I strongly doubt that any of those self-made millionaires is the son of, say, a Mexican car washer.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  >1. 85% of America's millionaires are self-made ("The Millionaire Next Door" by Stanley) 2. there's never been more free opportunities for self-education, from the Khan Academy to MIT lectures free online. If those were mentioned in the article he would not have much of an article would he?
- normloman 12y ago
  1.85% is pretty small. (EDIT: This is incorrect. I take it back!) And learning online may teach you the skills, but won't replace the prestige you earn or the connections you make at an ivy league university. The fact that you're at a prestigious university in the first place means there's a good chance you're already rich. And the easiest way to get rich is to be rich in the first place. This is the point of the article. Not that education makes all the difference, but that being rich has so many advantages.
_0ffh 12y ago
This is a red herring! I can believe the argument of hereditary meritocracy for an academic middle class, where children grow up in houses with books in them, rather than 24/7 TV, and parents who are able and willing to help their kids when they struggle with their school work. But it does most definitely NOT apply like this for the "elite" - that is when you get a cushy, highly paid job where you can virtually do no wrong because you studied at the right university, visit the right clubs and (therefore) know the right people. And that is only until you come into your inheritance, when your "work" will consist of raking in the huge rent you are receiving because you are rich already.
- tormeh 12y ago
  So much this. That merit is hereditary is a problem, but merit was never that important anyway. The thing that really drives me up the wall, though, is popular culture's insistence on hard work as the key to success, when really the most common way to success is various variants of interest(investment returns etc)
- nhaehnle 12y ago
  In fairness, it's a bit of both. The position of parents on the income scale vs. the position of children on the income scale is (too) highly correlated all across the income scale. The mechanisms for this correlations are different ones at different points of the scale, as you say, and certainly the very top is the part that needs the most fixing.
- jeffreyrogers 12y ago
  > that is when you get a cushy, highly paid job where you can virtually do no wrong because you studied at the right university, visit the right clubs and (therefore) know the right people While it's du jour to criticize the wealthy for the occupations they choose, I take issue with the idea that the jobs are "cushy" and ones in which you "can do no wrong". It's certainly true that going to the right university and knowing the right people gets your foot in the door, but for the most part the people who get these high paying jobs are immensely qualified. And the jobs they are doing are in fact challenging and you will be fired for underperformance. I've been going through the interviewing process at one of these universities and while on the whole I'm not impressed with the quality of the students here compared with e.g. my high school (and I think there is a lot of smugness and false sense of superiority among many of my peers for presumably being smarter/better than everyone at a "lesser" school), I am, however, very impressed with the students I've met in the final rounds of the interview process for some of the top tier banks and other financial firms. They are among the most intelligent and well rounded of those I've met in school.
userulluipeste 12y ago
"The children of the rich and powerful are increasingly well suited to earning wealth and power themselves. (elite is producing children who not only get ahead, but deserve to do so: they meet the standards of meritocracy better than their peers, and are thus worthy of the status they inherit) That’s a problem" Actually, this kind of thinking in itself is a problem. If there is any deterrence in social mobility where potential value does not get the chance to become true value then by all means - address that deterrence. But taking a political standing questioning the moral for current state where (although resourceful) potential value becoming true value? This is wrong. Humanity getting better (through non-destructive ways) does not need justification in someone's eyes or qualification in some political doctrine's view, because it is in itself more important than any of these.
- userulluipeste 12y ago
  Got down-voted pretty quickly! Was it after a rational analyze of the contents I've written or was it just an emotional response?
  - userulluipeste 12y ago
    More karma burn and no explanation whatsoever. I think this answers not only my parent question, it also gives a glimpse on human nature of our time and what are we currently surrounded by. The humanity that I've mentioned earlier has apparently still a long way to go.
minikites 12y ago
It wouldn't be a complete solution, but a 100% estate/inheritance tax would go a long way to correcting this. Without that you can't even remotely pretend everyone in this country has equality of opportunity.
- minikites 12y ago
  To people who disagree, how do you justify the concept of inheritance other than status quo bias? You can say that the concept of working hard as a parent is to provide a better life for your children than you had but what about the much more common situation of the elder generation being broke and unable to pass anything along to their children? What about all the parents who can barely eke out an existence?
- userulluipeste 12y ago
  I haven't down-voted you, but I must say it's a crazy idea. We may try finding ways to impose some handicap to some people for... what exactly? For some political/social sense of rightness? In the end, the fact is, the entire society benefits from having competent people around, regardless of their pedigree chart. Moreover, like the article mentions, the inheritance isn't just estate/material any more. It's a broad spectrum that starts from (probably controverted) genetic advantage up to the process of being groomed for high-level positions in society. Say, how would we tax the parent's reputation and her network of social connections that somehow spills over the off-springs?
  - minikites 12y ago
    It's very possible that I'm missing some vital concept but start from the other direction, as if inheritance never existed: The point of taxes is to contribute to society for the help they have given you for resources we all share (infrastructure, national defense, education, etc). After you die, why should your accumulated wealth, produced with the help of society, go to only your offspring instead of society at large?
    - aswanson 12y ago
transfire 12y ago
When I step back and take a look at modern America, I don't see much of a meritocracy. It looks much more like a mediocrity.
wmyl 12y ago
We abolished "titles of nobility" but forgot to address the government privileges, such as patent "royalties" and land-titles, which yield the payments that monopolists like to rent-seek.
wmyl 12y ago
We abolished "titles of nobility" but forgot to address the government privileges, such as patent "royalties" and land-titles, which yield the monopoly payments that rentiers like to rent-seek.
wmyl 12y ago
"Our Enemy, The State", by Albert J. Nock - 1935. CHAPTER 4 ===================================================== AFTER conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the State. In its capacity as ultimate landlord, the State distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its own terms. A point to be observed in passing is that by the State-system of land-tenure each original transaction confers two distinct monopolies, entirely different in their nature, inasmuch as one concerns the right to labour-made property, and the other concerns the right to purely law-made property. The one is a monopoly of the use-value of land; and the other, a monopoly of the economic rent of land. The first gives the right to keep other persons from using the land in question, or trespassing on it, and the right to exclusive possession of values accruing from the application of labour to it; values, that is, which are produced by exercise of the economic means upon the particular property in question. Monopoly of economic rent, on the other hand, gives the exclusive right to values accruing from the desire of other persons to possess that property; values which take their rise irrespective of any exercise of the economic means on the part of the holder.[1] Economic rent arises when, for whatsoever reason, two or more persons compete for the possession of a piece of land, and it increases directly according to the number of persons competing. The whole of Manhattan Island was bought originally by a handful of Hollanders from a handful of Indians for twenty-four dollars' worth of trinkets. The subsequent "rise in land-values," as we call it, was brought about by the steady influx of population and the consequent high competition for portions of the island's surface; and these ensuing values were monopolized by the holders. They grew to an enormous size, and the holders profited accordingly; the Astor, Wendel, and Trinity Church estates have always served as classical examples for study of the State-system of land-tenure.

119 points by bootload 12y ago

bootload 12y ago

source <https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264> https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264>

willvarfar 12y ago
Glad you put the Paul Graham endorsement here; this story was mysteriously flagged off the front page yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8930360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8930360 links to this version of the story: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-intellectual-capital-grows-privilege-has-become-increasingly http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-in...
- bootload 12y ago
  didn't check yesterdays page. This is one example where the site fails, changed url, same title (update: wrong) and where the poster (me) has to check. If you notice the a) compared to b) notice there are no graphs. ... read a bit more: B) has been re-edited down from print A) and re-purposed. I had to re-read both to see B) is a re-write. Even the sub-heading are changed. I do believe B) is an inferior version of A). A) America’s elite: An hereditary meritocracy http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21640316-children-rich-and-powerful-are-increasingly-well-suited-earning-wealth-and-power http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21640316-children-ric... B) America’s new aristocracy http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-intellectual-capital-grows-privilege-has-become-increasingly http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21640331-importance-in...
  - davidw 12y ago
    The Economist has lead editorials, and then more in-depth articles. B) is a leader (you can even see it in the URL), A) is the more in-depth article. You can see them both listed here: http://www.economist.com/printedition/2015-01-24 http://www.economist.com/printedition/2015-01-24 I think that they make a lot of good points, and think it's a good article (I subscribe to The Economist), but also think it's primarily a political subject and discussion.
    - bootload 12y ago
      Thank you David, I'm not a Economist reader so this clears up the confusion on my behalf.
blfr 12y ago
HN doesn't interpret <> correctly. Here https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/558494900245643264
- bootload 12y ago
  thx @blfr

jballanc 12y ago

For millennia, being "elite" meant owning land. In a primarily agrarian society, owning land is a huge advantage. So then, if that land is passed along hereditary lines, the establishment of a "landed aristocracy" is inevitable. The risk in "meritocracy" is that we no longer live in an agrarian society. In the modern economy skills, training, and education are the surest means to success. We've replaced the "landed aristocracy" with the "educated aristocracy". This could only be considered a meritocracy if the potential to become educated was equally available to all, but the situation in America is further from that ideal than almost any other place in the world.

crdoconnor 12y ago
>In the modern economy skills, training, and education are the surest means to success. Nope. Still land: http://mattbruenig.com/2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a-college-degree-or-being-born-rich/ http://mattbruenig.com/2013/06/13/whats-more-important-a-col... actually it was never just land either. It used to be about owning land, debts, gold and slaves Now it's about owning land, debts (bonds), gold and shares.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  I can't find numbers on how many Americans own homes, but 67% of homes are occupied by their owner. That's quite a large aristocracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeownership_in_the_United_St... 52% own stocks. http://www.gallup.com/poll/162353/stock-ownership-stays-record-low.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/162353/stock-ownership-stays-reco... I'm too lazy to google bonds and gold (both easily available to anyone with a brokerage account). The means to success seem pretty accessible based on these numbers.
  - hkmurakami 12y ago
    Perhaps share of land / stocks / debts owned may be a better metric. Also, home ownership should be replaced with home equity ownership.
  - 12y ago

jokoon 12y ago

> they meet the standards of meritocracy better than their peers, and are thus worthy of the status they inherit. Or maybe the education system ended up being tailored for well minded people, and not for the others ? Education involves a lot of human interaction, it's pretty difficult to teach and learn. > Neither has plausible ideas for what to do about it. The purpose of education, in my mind, is to lift people out of poverty by just teaching them a job that their parents don't have any relationship with, and will never have. If you put competition in something that is made to reduce inequality, you will be disappointed. Maybe expensive schools should be taxed to fund more public schools too. There's a student loan bubble, so why not tax it to fund community colleges ? To be honest, I live in france, I think the problem with the US education system is what the education quality students are exposed to from age of 8 to 16. I think it's very heterogeneous in the US, and that might be the source of the problem.

alkonaut 12y ago

A lot of the problems with social mobility in the US could be solved if universities didn't get to handle their own admissions. Interviews and "letters of application" are just a way to let wealthy sponsors get their kids into the best education. Why not just say universities either hand over their admission to a central agency OR agree to base all admission on objective parameters like standardized tests or grades?

wyclif 12y ago
Why in the world would a university give up control over something as important as admissions to a third party?
- alkonaut 12y ago
  If lawmakers believed such a law would help the political goal of improving social mobility and true meritocracy (rather than hereditary) then such a law would pass, and universities would simply have to follow it. To answer your question, they wouldn't give that right up but rather have it revoked.
  - _0ffh 12y ago
    Or you live in a country where Universities are historically publicly founded and funded to begin with. That what it is like in my country. There are also a few private Universities here, but those are not bound to all the same rules as the public ones.
mantas 12y ago
My country uses exact system that you're suggesting and I am jealous of US system of interviews and letters of application. Over there, potential students submit their high school performance reports to a centralised system and select programmes they want to study. Then system selects students based purely on their academical performance. It includes high school exam and average grades at final year of high school. Few top performers in each programme get all expenses paid, a bunch of good-but-not-best get partial coverage. All seems good on paper, but it gets nasty during the last few years at high school. People do whatever they can to increase their grades. Including cheating, manipulating teachers and so on. In addition to that, people learn solely for the exams. Instead of gathering general knowledge, previous exams are studied to prepare for questions that may be in the upcoming exam. So it's either studying for grades or paying for studies. Another problem is that some people graduate with the best grades and don't know what they want to do. But they're pretty sure to get a free spot thanks to good grades. They apply for random programme that has a cool title. Sometimes they end up enjoying it, sometimes they just sit through it and end up working in a different field. While people who were genuinely interested in that subject, but had lower grades, may not get even a paid spot. It may be grass-is-greener thingie, but interviews and letters of application seem to be much better way. Grades do not show if particular person is a good fit for the specific programme. Different schools/teachers rate their students a bit differently as well.

WalterBright 12y ago

> Caltech, a university which admits purely on academic ability, has more Asian students than other elite schools. Caltech is unique in other ways - it's the only university with an honor system top to bottom.

WalterBright 12y ago

Unsaid in the article: 1. 85% of America's millionaires are self-made ("The Millionaire Next Door" by Stanley) 2. there's never been more free opportunities for self-education, from the Khan Academy to MIT lectures free online.

doikor 12y ago
Sad thing is that you no longer are the kind of elite talked in this article by just having a few millions. The real american elite has assets in the hundreds of millions or billions.
pizza234 12y ago
This line of thinking is the same as Will Hunting say that you can get a Harvard education for 1.50$ in fees at the public library. Education is a wide-scope issue; availability is only part of the equation. It's easy to perceive education as "immediate" from the middle/upper class point of view, but it's not so immediate in reality for families living on food stamps and/or multiple jobs, and/or with relatives in jail, and/or having children going to schools with high crime rates and/or poor teachers, and so on. I strongly doubt that any of those self-made millionaires is the son of, say, a Mexican car washer.
happyscrappy 12y ago
>1. 85% of America's millionaires are self-made ("The Millionaire Next Door" by Stanley) 2. there's never been more free opportunities for self-education, from the Khan Academy to MIT lectures free online. If those were mentioned in the article he would not have much of an article would he?
normloman 12y ago
1.85% is pretty small. (EDIT: This is incorrect. I take it back!) And learning online may teach you the skills, but won't replace the prestige you earn or the connections you make at an ivy league university. The fact that you're at a prestigious university in the first place means there's a good chance you're already rich. And the easiest way to get rich is to be rich in the first place. This is the point of the article. Not that education makes all the difference, but that being rich has so many advantages.

_0ffh 12y ago

This is a red herring! I can believe the argument of hereditary meritocracy for an academic middle class, where children grow up in houses with books in them, rather than 24/7 TV, and parents who are able and willing to help their kids when they struggle with their school work. But it does most definitely NOT apply like this for the "elite" - that is when you get a cushy, highly paid job where you can virtually do no wrong because you studied at the right university, visit the right clubs and (therefore) know the right people. And that is only until you come into your inheritance, when your "work" will consist of raking in the huge rent you are receiving because you are rich already.

tormeh 12y ago
So much this. That merit is hereditary is a problem, but merit was never that important anyway. The thing that really drives me up the wall, though, is popular culture's insistence on hard work as the key to success, when really the most common way to success is various variants of interest(investment returns etc)
nhaehnle 12y ago
In fairness, it's a bit of both. The position of parents on the income scale vs. the position of children on the income scale is (too) highly correlated all across the income scale. The mechanisms for this correlations are different ones at different points of the scale, as you say, and certainly the very top is the part that needs the most fixing.
jeffreyrogers 12y ago
> that is when you get a cushy, highly paid job where you can virtually do no wrong because you studied at the right university, visit the right clubs and (therefore) know the right people While it's du jour to criticize the wealthy for the occupations they choose, I take issue with the idea that the jobs are "cushy" and ones in which you "can do no wrong". It's certainly true that going to the right university and knowing the right people gets your foot in the door, but for the most part the people who get these high paying jobs are immensely qualified. And the jobs they are doing are in fact challenging and you will be fired for underperformance. I've been going through the interviewing process at one of these universities and while on the whole I'm not impressed with the quality of the students here compared with e.g. my high school (and I think there is a lot of smugness and false sense of superiority among many of my peers for presumably being smarter/better than everyone at a "lesser" school), I am, however, very impressed with the students I've met in the final rounds of the interview process for some of the top tier banks and other financial firms. They are among the most intelligent and well rounded of those I've met in school.

userulluipeste 12y ago

"The children of the rich and powerful are increasingly well suited to earning wealth and power themselves. (elite is producing children who not only get ahead, but deserve to do so: they meet the standards of meritocracy better than their peers, and are thus worthy of the status they inherit) That’s a problem" Actually, this kind of thinking in itself is a problem. If there is any deterrence in social mobility where potential value does not get the chance to become true value then by all means - address that deterrence. But taking a political standing questioning the moral for current state where (although resourceful) potential value becoming true value? This is wrong. Humanity getting better (through non-destructive ways) does not need justification in someone's eyes or qualification in some political doctrine's view, because it is in itself more important than any of these.

userulluipeste 12y ago
Got down-voted pretty quickly! Was it after a rational analyze of the contents I've written or was it just an emotional response?
- userulluipeste 12y ago
  More karma burn and no explanation whatsoever. I think this answers not only my parent question, it also gives a glimpse on human nature of our time and what are we currently surrounded by. The humanity that I've mentioned earlier has apparently still a long way to go.

minikites 12y ago

It wouldn't be a complete solution, but a 100% estate/inheritance tax would go a long way to correcting this. Without that you can't even remotely pretend everyone in this country has equality of opportunity.

minikites 12y ago
To people who disagree, how do you justify the concept of inheritance other than status quo bias? You can say that the concept of working hard as a parent is to provide a better life for your children than you had but what about the much more common situation of the elder generation being broke and unable to pass anything along to their children? What about all the parents who can barely eke out an existence?
userulluipeste 12y ago
I haven't down-voted you, but I must say it's a crazy idea. We may try finding ways to impose some handicap to some people for... what exactly? For some political/social sense of rightness? In the end, the fact is, the entire society benefits from having competent people around, regardless of their pedigree chart. Moreover, like the article mentions, the inheritance isn't just estate/material any more. It's a broad spectrum that starts from (probably controverted) genetic advantage up to the process of being groomed for high-level positions in society. Say, how would we tax the parent's reputation and her network of social connections that somehow spills over the off-springs?
- minikites 12y ago
  It's very possible that I'm missing some vital concept but start from the other direction, as if inheritance never existed: The point of taxes is to contribute to society for the help they have given you for resources we all share (infrastructure, national defense, education, etc). After you die, why should your accumulated wealth, produced with the help of society, go to only your offspring instead of society at large?
  - aswanson 12y ago

transfire 12y ago

When I step back and take a look at modern America, I don't see much of a meritocracy. It looks much more like a mediocrity.

wmyl 12y ago

We abolished "titles of nobility" but forgot to address the government privileges, such as patent "royalties" and land-titles, which yield the payments that monopolists like to rent-seek.

wmyl 12y ago

We abolished "titles of nobility" but forgot to address the government privileges, such as patent "royalties" and land-titles, which yield the monopoly payments that rentiers like to rent-seek.

wmyl 12y ago

"Our Enemy, The State", by Albert J. Nock - 1935. CHAPTER 4 ===================================================== AFTER conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the State. In its capacity as ultimate landlord, the State distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its own terms. A point to be observed in passing is that by the State-system of land-tenure each original transaction confers two distinct monopolies, entirely different in their nature, inasmuch as one concerns the right to labour-made property, and the other concerns the right to purely law-made property. The one is a monopoly of the use-value of land; and the other, a monopoly of the economic rent of land. The first gives the right to keep other persons from using the land in question, or trespassing on it, and the right to exclusive possession of values accruing from the application of labour to it; values, that is, which are produced by exercise of the economic means upon the particular property in question. Monopoly of economic rent, on the other hand, gives the exclusive right to values accruing from the desire of other persons to possess that property; values which take their rise irrespective of any exercise of the economic means on the part of the holder.[1] Economic rent arises when, for whatsoever reason, two or more persons compete for the possession of a piece of land, and it increases directly according to the number of persons competing. The whole of Manhattan Island was bought originally by a handful of Hollanders from a handful of Indians for twenty-four dollars' worth of trinkets. The subsequent "rise in land-values," as we call it, was brought about by the steady influx of population and the consequent high competition for portions of the island's surface; and these ensuing values were monopolized by the holders. They grew to an enormous size, and the holders profited accordingly; the Astor, Wendel, and Trinity Church estates have always served as classical examples for study of the State-system of land-tenure.