Meritocratic

Sixty years on from Young’s book, a pure product of meritocratic training has emerged to write what he hopes will be the epitaph for his class.

And now Mr. Markovits is taking his message to the masses, with a big new book arguing that the meritocratic ideal has not only fed rampant inequality and hollowed out the middle class, but also threatens democracy itself.

But while the meritocratic system was intended to democratize American society, argues Yale Law School’s Daniel Markovits in his book The Meritocracy Trap, it has instead contributed to increasing inequality and the decline of the middle class.