Meritocracy In America
After retirement, many elderly people reflect on their lives, they consider their social status, job, income and current health. Most would say they had a good life, but none of them would ever question whether or not they deserved the life they had. The reason is that Americans have a meritocratic society in place that reward for effort and ability. In other words, a person will get what they deserve as long as they work hard for it. According to Narmit Arora “we are the authors of our own destiny and whoever wins the race is morally deserving of the rewards they obtain- and on its flip side, that we morally deserve our failure, too” (Arora 88). This economic model advocates hard work and justifies failures by having a person blame themselves
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In order to be successful a person has to be the best of the best at their job, it’s basically survival of the fittest. This kind of mentality creates competition between social classes and allows this idea that “we are entitled to the benefits the rules of the game promise for the exercise of our talents” to be developed (90). A person should be allowed to reap the benefits of their natural talents and should not feel bad about it because they played by the rules of the competition and came out on top because of certain skills they possess. For example, when it comes to sports, athletes are chosen based on their raw talent and ability to score points and win games. Nothing else is considered when they are signing a million dollar contract, but no one thinks about what happens to the 99% of people that do not make it and are the reason why that individual is rich and famous. The upper class “natural gifts aren’t their own doing, and are moreover profitable only in light of the value of the community places on them, they must share the rewards with the community” (88). Having support and profit from the lower and middle class is the only explanation for their success which is why the rich should willingly help their economy. The epitome of a meritocracy is that they have a one sided selection process and those that are not the 1 percent are suffering financially even though they are the cause of upper class success. The wealthy sharing their profit like in an egalitarian society will help improve the meritocratic
In order to be successful a person has to be the best of the best at their job, it’s basically survival of the fittest. This kind of mentality creates competition between social classes and allows this idea that “we are entitled to the benefits the rules of the game promise for the exercise of our talents” to be developed (90). A person should be allowed to reap the benefits of their natural talents and should not feel bad about it because they played by the rules of the competition and came out on top because of certain skills they possess. For example, when it comes to sports, athletes are chosen based on their raw talent and ability to score points and win games. Nothing else is considered when they are signing a million dollar contract, but no one thinks about what happens to the 99% of people that do not make it and are the reason why that individual is rich and famous. The upper class “natural gifts aren’t their own doing, and are moreover profitable only in light of the value of the community places on them, they must share the rewards with the community” (88). Having support and profit from the lower and middle class is the only explanation for their success which is why the rich should willingly help their economy. The epitome of a meritocracy is that they have a one sided selection process and those that are not the 1 percent are suffering financially even though they are the cause of upper class success. The wealthy sharing their profit like in an egalitarian society will help improve the meritocratic