I couldn’t help but be struck by the oddity of Megan McArdle’s chief worry about inequality:
But in America, money buys access to things, particularly education, but also opportunities like unpaid internships, that make it easier to get a high-paying job. This may be more worrisome than big wealth concentrations. Wealth is eroded over time, either by lazy heirs or the sheer multiplication of descendants; hence the phrase “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”. But if the rich start passing on, not money, but the habits, skills, and social capital to make your own money, the result could be an aristocracy more deeply entrenched than any ever seen in America. Conservatives might rejoinder that this elite might be more entrenched, but less effective, since much of what it is handing its descendants are positive endowments such as virtue and education; endowments that can’t be realized without a substantial amount of work by those descendants. I don’t think that’s right–our education system daily gives lie to the notion that America nurtures any sort of equality of opportunity–but even if it were, we’d need to think hard about the character of a nation with a hereditary educational aristocracy.
First, the rich have always done their best to pass their “habits, skills, and social capital” on to their heirs; in fact, past a certain age and level of wealth, that may be one of their primary motivations. Nothing new here. Second, they’re only somewhat successful at it. As it happens, last night I watched “Metropolitan,” Whit Stillman’s wonderful portrait of the “urban haute bourgeoisie.” Two central characters meet a middle-aged member of their own class one night at a Manhattan bar and ask whether failure is inevitable for someone in their social position. He tells them it isn’t; there’s just enough success to make you realize that your mediocrity is entirely your own fault. Reversion to the mean is the dominant pattern.
Third, the meritocracy of educational institutions and employers does much to undermine the possibility of a hereditary educational aristocracy. Once upon a time, elite colleges and universities admitted students primarily on the basis of money and social connections. Now, it’s overwhelmingly SAT scores and other academic criteria. That persists throughout the system. When my department admits graduate students, we look at GRE scores, GPAs, letters of recommendation, and written work; we pay very little attention to the undergraduate institution the student attended. When companies visit my university to recruit, they pay attention to GPAs, not connections. The (limited) threat of a hereditary educational elite comes almost exclusively from the (limited) heritability of cognitive ability.
Fourth, I must protest McArdle’s claim that “our education system daily gives lie to the notion that America nurtures any sort of equality of opportunity.” She assumes that your environment—your socioeconomic status, that of your classmates, the quality of your school, the size of your class, the prestige of your university, etc.—has vast influence over your future. But it doesn’t. The correlation between any of these factors and later success is actually very weak. They matter, but they don’t matter much. Intelligence, drive, determination, persistence, and hard work matter more.
I can’t resist telling an anecdote. I grew up in a roughly 900-square-foot house in south Pittsburgh. A close friend lived in a nearly identical house on the same street. (In fact, she still does.) She could have gone to college, but didn’t, choosing instead to stay home to take care of her brothers, all of whom were dying of a hereditary disease. She eventually became an expert in municipal bonds. She found herself in a meeting in Washington arguing with attorneys from the Securities and Exchange Commission about new regulations concerning municipal bond offerings. At one point, the argument became heated, and one attorney snapped, “What law school did you go to, anyway?” Calmly, she said, “Let’s not make this personal.” She repeated her argument and ended up prevailing. The truth, of course, is that her highest educational achievement was graduating from a Catholic high school in Pittsburgh. But that didn’t stop her from succeeding.
The fundamental problem is materialism.
Enjoy stuff.
Don’t let it own you.
Don’t fret about the stuff of others.
Recall that you’re never more than a heartbeat from demise. Far from morbid, this is the key to freedom from materialism.
Dr. Philo: Excellent post. There are so many problems with Mcardle’s “argument,” one hardly knows where to begin. Your criticisms are thoroughly compelling. A few more points.
1. People overestimate the value, with respect to happiness, of having a lot of money. A study done by Harvard psychologists, three years ago (sorry, can’t remember quite the reference) on the nature of happiness, clearly demonstrated that, generally speaking, after about 75k per year, for a small, family, financial problems increase as money increases, and people become less satisified with their lives. 2. Lots and lots of lower middle-class families raise kids, teaching them how to work hard and succeed financially. If Mcardle thinks that everyone should be taught more vigorously these same virtues in school, then she needs to join with conservatives who have been arguing for this for decades. We’ve been vigorously opposed by . . . . the NEA. 3. A light went on for me, years and years ago, when I observed (and it was independently observed by lots of other social spectators) 3rd generation Pittsburgh steel-workers, were laid off from the steel factories, while in their 20’s. They would then study for a few months, take the SAT and get into college, and end up in medical school, at Pitt. It happened with remarkable regularity. From lower class, or lower middle class–Polish, Italian, and Irish Catholics have lots of kids–to MD, in one generation: by discipline and hard work, more than anything else. If these people pass on their virtues and habits, then more power to them.