Liberal and Conservative Meritocracy Crash and Burn Non-College Educated
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In 1993 when I was thirty, I was calling around to find a job in the advertising industry. At the first place I called, the agency owner asked if I had a college degree. He said, “I should consider getting one, then call him back.” Can you say, a credentialed meritocracy slap-in-the-face, downer? If that agency was not my first call, I may have kept trying anyway, but I could already hear every future call in the same vain (in vein) in my head. That is what I get for having an overactive imagination.
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When on the positive side of things, such an imagination is a wonderful thing. But bad vibes send it down the negative ramp faster than I can reel it back. I did have two years of college, a year of technical schooling in radio, six years in radio, and got kinda good at standup over four years in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Yet these accomplishments were not enough to overcome my brain chemistry in those days. With encouragement and the financial stability of my wife, a school psychologist, I returned to get my degree from 1994–96, was employed shortly after graduating, and started my own business in 2000.
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My father an automotive engineer at Bendix who received two years of technical training, help develop modern power steering and brakes, worked with the big names of the Big 3 auto companies, like John DeLorean, Lee Iacocca, and Henry Ford II. Ironically, up until he retired from work, dad was concerned about his lack of a four year degree, thinking his co-workers would find out (he was a fraud?).
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After serving in WWII, he wanted to use the GI-Bill to get into Notre Dame, since he was a subway Alumni; the home of the Fighting Irish is where we both were born, South Bend, Indiana. Unfortunately, too many GIs were applying in 1946–47, so dad never became an actual Notre Dame alum, instead he went to California, enrolling at Northrop Aeronautical Institute.
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My mom, Dorothy, and her Irish O’Connell heritage, was another reason N.D. stayed in the family, even though none of us attended the university. Except mom did go out on a “date” with N.D. Heisman Trophy winner, Paul Hornung.
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The scarring from the generalizations and accentuations about a four year degree noted in the following paragraphs is real, and can go very deep. My father had a, and I have a, lesser form of it, but my overactive imagination can return there all too easily with anger and resentment, especially for my father, who should have never had those feelings with all his accomplishments. Of course, we are both white guys who were given a chance many people of color never have gotten, or never get.
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Yet the pain of these hurts and harms we share should draw people of color and whites together not drive us apart. Instead many non-four-year-college whites side with the moneyed meritocracy, and the mega-wealthy white political power merchants.
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The Analysis And Accompanying Data.
Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor, has written a very cogent and topical book about the state of education, economics, culture, and politics in the United States. I am in much agreement with his analysis and criticism, which bases the cause of a good portion of voter polarization, generated over the last forty years, on our advocating for meritocracy. However, I wanted to tie up some loose ends as to how we got to this point as well as other pertinent ideas.
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My loose ends may not be the most necessary addition to the overall meritocracy argument, yet it is meant to provide more connective reasons for the backlash, and its unfortunate inevitability. I also hope it helps bring more of us together by diminishing some of our polarization. No specific person or group is fully responsible for the polarizing current pulsing through America. Meritocracy has been taken up by nearly every side for good and/or evil. Sandel might say its negative effects come from both sins of omission and commission.
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Liberals used meritocracy to help remove some discrimination from our systems. Conservatives often use it to justify economic and other inequality. Unfortunately, liberals could not see where the benefits started causing harms to the culture in other ways, most specifically to blue collar workers who lack a four year college degree. Graduating college became the status symbol that would drastically draw a widening income, and value of existence, line between those with a degree, and those without.
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Conservatives came up with a house of cards, zero empathy and character, reason for a malignant form of meritocracy based solely on profit, wealth, and income volume. The value to the common good was equal to the quantity of dollars pocketed, and usually played with on Wall Street. Investment in other countries and ideas had much more value than investments in workers. All of this turned liberal and conservative meritocracy belief systems into soul stealing enterprises.
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Basically, liberals got the top 50+ public and private elite colleges much closer to gender, race, ethnicity, and religious percentage parity, but rebalanced the wealth and income scales back to the 1950s, according to Sandel. Conservatives stripped away everything except CEO pay, billionaires, and corporate profits from their common good perspective so workers saw their pay drop in just under four decades from 30 times less than what CEOs make to more than 300 times less than what CEOs make today.
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Once the white male worker had their low place recalibrated in their faces with the bright beacon of not having a four year degree, and were discarded by the economy that gave them meaning, those deaths of despair came like a torrent. The general increase in life expectancy has decreased greatly for white males in rural areas, when nearly every other group has risen more robustly. From a wealth perspective, some may consider less sympathetically, those who end up at the top colleges, are put into an educative strategy that stressfully pushes many to the brink, or further. Deaths of despair have flared up here as well: a 36% rise in suicides of 20 to 24 year-olds since 2000, particularly college students.
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Sandel notes in his book, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?, that non-college educated white males, and their deaths of despair track along with the counties Trump won in 2016, more so than race or income. While misogyny and racism were evident in Trump’s life, actions, and words, and many supporters had varying levels of those traits, anger about their real reduced place in the world, unconnected to any gender or racial animosity, likely was the single biggest determinant for those who voted Trump into office. That likelihood should give pause to those continuing to push aggressively on their buttons. Individually, many may still deserve criticism, but generalizing merely keeps overall polarization amped up.
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Where Both Sides Works Though Still Asymmetric.
In most cases, I would not say both sides do it. That said, both sides have had a hand in this inculcated, meritocratic malaise and melee, albeit from different angles. Yet what is done is done. More importantly, from here on out, what we do, or not do, is what matters.
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Did Obama’s presidency, and Hillary’s campaign increase the evident anger of the white male, blue collar worker? Sandel thinks so, and so do I. Although this was mostly inadvertent on their individual part, due to the credentialed, meritocracy culture that was going to be associated with them in ugly, and powerful ways. That is because I see structural and systemic racism and sexism as a major cause in the rise of hyper-meritocracy, and an even greater flaring of polarization.
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For both Obama and Hillary, being highly credentialed was a necessity. They could have played down, and avoided their credentialed perspective by various methods to reel in more blue collar workers, who were aggrieved in the way Sandel postulates. Unfortunately, that was also not possible to any extent. They were in the vice grip of the meritocracy culture, and maybe more so, their racial and gender roles. As a woman or a black man being average in too many ways would never give you the oomph to overcome the prejudices of Americans, especially in higher profile roles.
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Republicans would have attacked an average-presenting person of color or female Democrat much worse than any overly credentialed candidate. Except maybe for his age, and his long record, Joe Biden was the perfect example of a candidate who did not have a target painted on him. He is “average” as far as white male politicians go. Imagine a current congressional Democrat person of color his age, male or female, or a white female his age, being elected president with his less than average college educational ranking? That prejudiced predicament may change in the next election, but for the previous 45 presidents, and Joe Biden’s election, it was very, very unlikely.
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The first black president, or the first female president, could not pull off the “aw shucks” routine like Bush, or tossing word salads like Trump. White male presidents could be Archie Bunker, your friendly next door neighbor, or seem like it, Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter included, even though they were more credentialed than most previous presidents, without hitting the wall of what is, or seems to be snobbiness that annoys, or tangentially puts down the less educated. The average person positioning is just not available to black men, or women of any race today.
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There is likely no way most of us would have gotten this close to believing in, or understanding the idea Sandel presents, about meritocracy being detrimental to our democracy, until the previous three events occurred: Barrack’s presidency, Hillary’s democratic presidential nomination, and Donald’s time in office, called by some a presidency. Sandel mentions a number of people who saw the potential for our meritocracy experiment crashing and burning like it has. One is Michael Young, who first used the term in his book, Rise of the Meritocracy in the 1950s. Yet like an impending stock market crash, few take to heart such hypothetical conclusions during the hustle and bustle of daily life grinding on.
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Meritocracy is one of those, “well, of course we should do things that way”, at first, even second glance, ideas. Whittle it down to the worst-best case scenario, however, and you can see the problem rise up ugly and demoralizing. Imagine a technology that could measure our exact worth via our talents, and smarts after we all got the same education, but without considering other qualities. Now sort everyone into “you are worthy, and you are unworthy” categories, because that is what we would do, if we allowed it to happen without empathetic, and purposeful mediation.
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The above would be a pure form of meritocracy, and society would still tear itself apart. If from the day you were born, everyone told you that knowing advanced algebra before you turn 21 was the only thing that made you fully human— how would you see yourself, or your siblings if you, or they would never understand any higher math? That hypothetical analogy is similar to the ridiculous, unrealistic, and arbitrary biases all black Americans have endured because of slavery, and Jim Crow, and do now in many ways. Women of all colors also still experience some of it. Being average is often not enough for them to be seen as having acceptable worth by some groups, bosses, or coworkers, let alone being seen as successful, or allowed to actually succeed.
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That is why women and people of color must be over educated, and usually work harder, to get into areas where white males have formally controlled. And, why white males, even those who do not have a four-year college degree, are also complicit in the ramping up of the value of education for women and black men. Many white people of all classes, still denigrate and demean women or people of color, which has caused the dangerous inflation of college-degree meritocracy. How else do the excluded prove their worth, in an environment where most white men despise their rise, especially the higher ups with, or without a four-year degree?
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The asymmetry of fault comes from the conservative bent of stymying progress towards racial and gender equality. Our current meritocracy problem may have sprouted anyway, but the lengths conservatives will go to thwart progress is lesion and legion. There are either no problems in society from the conservative viewpoint, or they will not focus on any problem, they finally recognize as real, more than a few minutes with a few pennies.
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Yet, it is an indictment of our entire culture that puts everyone into a vice grip of harm in some way at some point. If we are not an active part of a culture that is harming us, then we are still committing sins of omission. Yes, some have a lot more shit in this show, but we all contribute to the shit show somehow. Therefore, each one of us must be doing consistently active, anti-shit show work to remove our cumulative shit stain.
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Rise Of Cheap Products And Cheaper Workers.
Consumerism was injected into the American psyche by conservatives to further justify, and devastatingly wind up, the meritocracy doomsday clock. By giving low-cost products the highest value added status in late 20th, and early 21st century society, workers were pushed deeper into a Forgotten-ville of anger, resentment, and despair. Cheaper products in a “free” trade, and globalized economy caused jobs to be exported overseas, and American manufacturing to decline, where many non-college grads work, and earn livable wages. The number of white men who have left work, and disappeared from the unemployment rolls has increased substantially since 1980.
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While many of these economic and education deficits hit people of color worse in percentage terms and in more economically precarious situations, white men make up a much larger portion of the workforce, particularly in manufacturing. Therefore, their negative responses will inflict more harm via the political scene than individual racial minorities are able to improve society in positive ways. White male anger can be wrapped up in a racial or sexist frame, but it also can be an inner rage that reflects their reduction in personal status, and their decline in worth to society, on its own terms.
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Note that the emphasis here is on disillusionment due to the national discourse on the value of a college education, and not specifically the economic aspects of work, wages, or wealth differentials as to women or racial groups.
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One of the reasons we get these results is our lack of comprehensive remedies. Our reliance on incrementalism, which I have written about recently, has made decade after decade mistakes like this more egregious. The Reagan and Clinton crime bills are another example of half-baked incrementalist ideas that have risen to exacerbating levels of egregiousness. Both bills worsened the drug problem, the lives of black Americans, and other people of color, created unforgivable mass incarceration, continued poverty, educational deficits, perpetuated racist attitudes, and more.
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The emotionalized, ideologue, and fragmented problem solving that incrementalism sustains is extensive, and destructive. We have a fixer upper that we overspend on the wrong materials, using cheap tools, employing incompetent (political) hacks, who work a few hours every month around their wasting-our-time “gambling” addictions, and binge “drinking”. More simply, our political establishment bets too much on crazy one-offs with its beer goggles on. That is American Incrementalism for you; I am unsure where in that kind of governing anyone sees our exceptionalism.
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Conservatives fear comprehensive change so we are stuck with our corrupted incrementalism idea. There is also no flexibility in our approach, so bad legislation is allowed to fester, and build up desperate scar tissue on the people it was meant to help, or hoped to influence. Yet lack of a comprehensive assessment and solution, as well as flexibility are a dangerous combination, when both are required for any plans to actually work. In addition, looking at one outcome dataset is problematic. What other negative societal issues arise from increased drug arrests? Who is hurt by making four year colleges a prerequisite for a future job?
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Liberals are accused of Soviet style planning when they suggest comprehensive long term solutions. The stereotypical fixed-in-stone five-year plan would be detrimental, but today everyone understands how many things can change quickly. That said, overall goals change much less. Helping everyone find a job that best fits their desires, and making sure as few people as possible go to prison, should never go out of style. That means we need both never-ending planning that is continually reassessed, and inclusive, 21st century goal plans that never end.
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How things are progressing toward those goals, and how we ultimately get there may change considerably. Our early assessments could be off, and our solutions could have blowback we did not expect, or want. Getting good input from all constituents is also required before developing any plan, as is ongoing feedback, from the people currently affected, and others with insightful knowledge. Readjustments should be expected, and built into the legislation.
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As is if we were reassessing in the late 1980s & late 1990s: Why are black Americans being jailed at higher rates, and for longer prison terms than whites, when both buy and sell drugs at the same levels? We should reconsider our views on crack cocaine, and over policing black communities. Why are our trade deals destroying more and more jobs from the manufacturing sector where most American men with decent jobs work? We must revise our thinking about putting so much value on the increasing of GDP and pursuing a crazy financialization strategy, rather than lowering the value of workers.
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If raising the cost of lifeless products improves our society, should we not consider the ongoing lowering of prices on products an area of concern, and certainly when more workers have fewer good jobs, and too many are themselves now lifeless from despair?
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Are both parties being honest with the American public, as to how unrestrained financialization, and unfettered “free” market and “free” trade capitalism undermine the value of their work? Should everyone be expected to get a four year degree, then work harder for many decades to have a decent retirement than a few valueless agents of a soulless capitalism who retire in their thirties with billions? Additionally, should those Americans who fail the four year college test just drop dead from despair; is that what makes America great?
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Uncommon Sense And Practical Wisdom.
Another internal problem we must overcome is our misunderstandings of common sense, expertise, education, and practical wisdom. Rather than present dictionary definitions, I am going to use my understanding of each to hopefully differentiate them better from an average person standpoint. Compared to my father I am average. He had a higher IQ, a photographic memory, was a highly trained and talented engineer, and a better writer in many ways. While I think I have a more agile, forward thinking, and creative mind than he did, I cannot say exactly what that gets me specifically.
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I did finish college, dad did not. It likely helped me widen my perspective beyond his in some ways. This is not to say college gave me talents that I did not already have to make the income I have made. Though without my four-year college degree, my prospects may have been narrowed by my feelings of inadequacy, like the advertising agency executive showered me with, and other skills I would not have honed. My father and mother endowed me with talents, and gave me practical wisdom, as did my life experiences, none of which college could have provided.
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That said, here we are not discussing the money we make, but how we feel our life is turning out, about our work, and general accomplishments. That mental duel between what we should do, or should have done, and our worth as a worker and human being depends on many factors, and can lead some of us to despair. Are we mostly satisfied with our lives? Does work bring us enough fulfillment to make the money we make mostly irrelevant? Do we think we have done good for our family?
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When we are comparing ourselves to others, which we tend to do, there are many ways this can go wrong. For example, distorting our body-image is a common problem, especially for adolescent girls. However, most women and men think about our body-image incorrectly. Possibly our minds become fixated during the puberty hormone festival that locks down our mind’s eye lies forever. Maybe it is a fluctuating misconception. Either way, our brains are not always too kind to us in these matters of comparison.
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As to our thoughts about our place in the world, whether we measure up, may fluctuate throughout our lives. We may start our life feeling inadequate and overcome it, almost no matter how our life turns out. Possibly, we start feeling somewhat inadequate in our middle age like my father until retiring, and still attain a lot without the accoutrements of a four year college degree. Either way, or in any other way, we the perceive lives of others and ourselves, we are likely getting it wrong. Everyone is struggling, and our struggles will never really be understood by anyone, even ourselves.
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My sister has struggled with cerebral palsy her whole life, and I really do not understand her struggles. I cannot put myself in her place, except for a few minutes at a time. Some parts of our life are going to suck no matter what we do, others do, or due to the disabilities we inherited, or abilities we did not. Of course, those who have higher than average incomes or wealth, or greater talents, are not doing terribly much overall to create, or activate positive changes in our community. The very wealthy either do it piecemeal, ignore there is a bigger need, hate government intervention, or leave it up to others.
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A college education also does not create a panacea for everyone. While it may remove a sucky part of life for some, the value of attending college for you, or for me may be just a delusion. Then again as Michael Keaton said in The Dream Team, “Stay out of my psychosis.” Our psychosis, or delusions may be required to get us from point “A” to point “B”. You choose yours, and I will choose mine. Yours may be an apprenticeship or technical college, and mine may be college as well as graduate school, but neither of us should be demeaned for our choice, nor pigeonholed into any choice.
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Though neither is a bad choice, committing to continued education of some kind is vital, from reading, autodidactic studies, to hands on learning to the highest levels of formal education. Common sense alone is not enough for most workers. And a formal education is also not the only education. Pretending common sense is all there is means you are relying on what others have relied on, therefore little desire to further educate yourself.
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My father was educated by his alcoholic father, who abused his mother, by his mother’s stubbornness and resourcefulness, being the male head of the household, hunting rabbits to supplement their food during the Depression, by his WWII Navy service, and decades as a father, husband, and mechanical engineer. All these experiences contributed to his practical wisdom.
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Practical wisdom, primary education, technical nor college, or graduate education, scholarship or expertise, even common sense, should never be underestimated, or overestimated. We all have worth; and we all could do better in at least one vital area. Degrading or demeaning people due to their level of education, or lack of wealth sucks the life from the human experience.
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His formal schooling, and technical school training augmented his practical wisdom. With common sense alone, my dad may have turned out as his father, my grandfather did, dying before age 60 from hard drinking. A four-year college could have given him other options, yet by reframing his concept of success, his life could have been the success to him it seemed to be to me.
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Allowing others, trends, or experts who look passed us, or down on us, to determine our worth will likely put us on a fast track to oblivion and dissolution. On the other hand, if there is something that we desire, is good for society, and will give us the chance to do much better, society should make it possible somehow, without that “assistance” being denigrated and derided by bought by big money politicians.
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Destroying American workers, no matter their color or gender, merely because we ignore them, or do not invest in them including their educational needs, is not an America that will thrive for very long. As parents, we should hope that our children learn, understand, experience, better, and more than we do, if at all possible.
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The practical wisdom development of our children should not be shortchanged either. Hard work should be done in proportion to the value it brings society, and their lives, not to pile up the pernicious profits of some taskmaster. Not everything can be perfected, but our lethargy in the direction of a more perfect union should end.
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There are many elements of society and various ideologies that can negatively or positively determine our political future. Trump was elected due to about 80 thousand votes (total) in three states in 2016, and lost due to about 70 thousand votes in three states in 2020. Garnering more electoral power from any one of the constituencies who are against racism, sexism, xenophobia, or dynastic meritocracy, is enough to overcome those small vote totals. However, it also makes sense to do things that help the greatest number of Americans. Disabling the corruptive power of our current meritocracy structure helps nearly everyone.
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Deaths Of Despair Draw Near.
My wife and I lost two local friends, who were white men in their late fifties, to deaths of despair that fit the typical pattern, or as far as we are able to determine. We cannot say they would have been Trump supporters, but our congressional district voted for him both times. If we are ever to end our epidemics and pandemics of early death, we must try harder, and do better.
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When I did not have a four year college education, I did not think it was a big deal. Then when I was told I needed one, I fought that suggestion. If I had the last 26 years of practical wisdom under my belt at the time, I likely would have still gotten my degree, but I would have put all of it on me. Not in my head, scapegoated others for my lack of decisiveness. I do not remember thinking it made me special; though I may have made others feel that way.
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A college degree did not make me special; it was what I wanted and needed to do. It did not make me a better person, though likely different, and better at somethings. Some of those better things I could have achieved without college; it is just that college pointed me in a direction I probably would have not seen. College is a tool that can be practiced incorrectly, never used, or be lost in reference to the value it could have produced. Some people do not combine it with a decent amount of practical wisdom.
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When we complain of experts, we are talking about those without much practical wisdom. Often it is because they do not respect our own practical wisdom. If you are an auto mechanic, you will not want me looking down on you as I say, “I have watched a number of Youtube videos on car engines, and you are wrong.”
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Depending on my father’s tone and demeanor, and that he is an auto engineer, and as long as he did not mention his education, or status as a way to overrule you, he could have said you were wrong without disrespecting you. Respecting his “expertise” in that case is much more likely. Except for those who are very easily offended, most of us can function, and respect the other, if they avoid donning their expertise medals to puff up their ego to try, and win their point.
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That all being said, a major reason we have our experts, and practical wisdom disunion and dystopia is due to our individualistic, highly separate fiefdoms of activities. Collaboration is done by a few at the top, and everyone else is crowded into a low impact, low influence, low wage environment scrambling for the scraps the corporate colluders, meritocratic malcontents, and capitalist collaborators have created.
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What remains of higher paid blue collar workers is shrinking each day. While most are white men, they have been unfairly abused by our separating economy: the very, very wealthy, and the poorer everyday remainder. The abuses they have suffered do not equate with those of persons of color, yet their reality has plunged in many ways.
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What is demanded by them should not be immediately discounted or considered as racist, xenophobic, or misogynist based. The general din of aberrant and destructive behaviors or comments may rise above those of Democrats, but that should not be a reason to make them forever, or more strongly associated with Republicans.
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Resolving the grievances of blue collar workers does not need to be at the cost of others. Republican leaning white male, blue collar workers must realize that goes both ways. Raising the status for people of color can be done in conjunction with whites, and most having their status also raised.
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The Conclusion.
Here is how. The separation of white Americans and Americans of color has almost always been to the other’s disadvantage. Except for the wealthy top 10 to 1%, separation has been a detriment. The wealthy are also harmed, but it may not take the form of a recognizable financial loss. The soul eating disorder of meritocracy and profits for the sake of meritocracy and profits has intensified in the last forty years. By dividing us, the wealthy can divide down to the spoils to fewer and fewer of them.
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As our productivity rose in the 1990s, most of the benefits went to the very wealthy, or 1%. The bottom 50% were gutted. The next 30% achieved a flatliner reading, a.k.a. a zero bonus. The remaining 10 to 19% saw a relatively small increase, a percent or three above cost of living. For the last 15 to 20 years productivity has been flat, no fault of workers, and the very wealthy have taken even more from the pie, and directly out of the workers pockets in the lower 50%, noted above. This pocket-picking was mostly due to the financialization of corporate America, as in stock buybacks, and the like that are not reinvestments in workers.
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The super wealthy do not need us. They have a worldwide market to continue scraping up profits. Having gotten away with their pay reduction scam for four decades, which continues to grind away at the wages of more and more Americans, only a coordinated effort will upend them. Blue collar, white Americans and Americans of color must tie ourselves together, or we will hang separately in our separate, worsening dystopias.
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Let us blur between our states’ of separation lines, whether red or blue, or white, black, or other races, or education status, with a nationwide strategy that puts workers and citizens in charge. We must dethrone the wealthy who have forgotten us for some of the reasons I noted, and the government structure they have bought with the substantial sum they stole from us.
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by Richard The Chwalek
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Learn about my We The People system, and how it provides individual Americans more control over their own future, and increases the worth of work and workers; get my ebook, Our Democracy Requires An Update: A Transformational We The People System.
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