The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee

Author:Stephen J. McNamee
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Being in the Right Place at

the Right Time

The Luck Factor

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird, and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

My aspiration now is to get by luck what I could not get by merit.

—Mason Cooley, U.S. aphorist

In thinking about who ends up with what jobs, Americans tend to first think about what economists call the “supply side.” In labor economics, the supply side refers to the pool of workers available to fill jobs. The ideology of meritocracy leads Americans to focus on the qualities of individual workers: how smart they are, how qualified they are, how much education they have, and so on. These “human capital” factors, however, represent only half of the equation. The other half, the “demand side,” is about the number and types of jobs available. How many jobs are available, their location, how much they pay, and how many people are seeking them are important but often neglected considerations in assessing the impact of merit on economic outcomes. In this chapter we explore the implications of the demand side and of being in the right place at the right time.

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