The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite

by Daniel Markovits

A former dean dons the sumptuous costume of an honorary doctor of laws awarded at Bologna, the oldest continuously operating university in Europe.

The most important is the idea that the afflictions that dominate American life arise not because meritocracy is imperfectly realized, but rather on account of meritocracy itself.

Meritocracy banishes the majority of citizens to the margins of their own society, consigning middle-class children to lackluster schools and middle-class adults to dead-end jobs.