the myth called merit

[undergroundpanther]

According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is the land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them. According to this ideology, you get out of the system what you put into it. Getting ahead is ostensibly based on individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity. Americans not only tend to think that is how the system should work, but most Americans also think that is how the system does work (Huber and Form 1973, Kluegel and Smith 1986, Ladd 1994).

In our book The Meritocracy Myth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), <http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com/isbn/0742510565>, we challenge the validity of these commonly held assertions, by arguing that there is a gap between how people think the system works and how the system actually does work. We refer to this gap as “the meritocracy myth,” or the myth that the system distributes resources—especially wealth and income—according to the merit of individuals.

The distribution of wealth measured by net worth is even more highly skewed. The richest 1% of households (99th-100th percentile) account for nearly a third of all available net worth while the bottom half of households (0-50th percentile) account for only 2.8% of all available net worth. In other words, the American distributions of income and wealth are “top heavy” (Wolff 2002) and represent a level of economic inequality that is the highest among industrial countries of the world.
http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v21/merit.htm

[no_hypocrisy]

1. It's hard to be enthusiastic about the virtues of merit when the Peter Principle

is ubiquitously applied and morons are given promotions while loyal, hard-working employees either work under them or being outright fired.

[fasttense]

2. I thought America worked on merit until the 2000 election.

When our highest court in the land picked our President, preventing the people's vote from being counted, contrary to established law, my blinders were removed.