This article came across my feed today, from a magazine that usually does a pretty good job of things.

I couldn’t help myself. I broke my rule of arguing with strangers on the internet in order to post this diatribe on the Facebook post:

This is horrifying, more like reading Ayn Rand than your typical U.S. Republican speech.

So the rich “inherit” the drive of their parents? What about the political, social, and financial capital that separates the elite from the poor, even in an egalitarian society such as Sweden? What about the fact that a rich B-student in the U.S. can afford an unpaid internship while a poor A-student might have to work for minimum wage in order to mitigate the financial damage of an education? What about the fact that due to these circumstances, the rich B-student gets fast-track to Management, while the A-student may end up working retail after he gets out, because he has no elite connections? What about the fact that the elite have the financial reserves to take outsize risks, safe in the knowledge that however hard they screw it up, they and their family will assuredly not starve.

The world is not an equal place, and Economists deal with the real world. That’s why we’re not philosophers or moralizers. Leave biased, incorrect, and unscientific ideology to them. We’ve got dismal science to do.

While I’m not at all alone in this assessment, I’d like to expand that last paragraph. Continue reading Drive Might Be Inherited, Money and Connections Certainly Are →