The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite cover
The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite
by Daniel Markovits
Description: The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits examines how the belief in meritocracy contributes to growing inequality, weakens the middle class, and creates difficulties for even the privileged elite in American society
ISBN: 0735221995
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gnicholas · 2021-12-13 · Original thread
If you're interested in social mobility, I'd highly recommend the recent book The Meritocracy Trap. [1] The author, a Yale Law professor, talks about how aristocracy has been largely replaced by meritocracy in the US, and what the consequences are for both middle class and elites.

His takeaway is that there is a yawning gap opening up between middle class and elites, and that neither group is well-served by this gap. The middle class have less mobility than before, at least when it comes to achieving super-elite levels. And the elite class work themselves to death and prompt their children to do the same.

1: https://www.amazon.com/Meritocracy-Trap-Foundational-Inequal...