The Meritocracy Myth

Abstract

According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is a land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them. But there is a very large gap between how people think the system works and how the system actually does work. Both income and wealth are highly skewed. Poverty is not randomly distributed either. The bottom of half of the population controls only 2.8% of net worth.

Keywords

• Meritocracy
• social inequality
• social stratification
• poverty