Chris Dillow — Meritocracy, Mobility & Fairness

There's one point Greg Clark makes in The Son Also Rises which strikes me as plain wrong. It's this:

The world is a much fairer place than we intuit. Innate talent, not inherited privilege, is the main source of economic success (p14).

The problem here isn't merely that, as Rawls said, talent is arbitrary from a moral point of view and so should not be the basis for unequal incomes. (In fairness, Clark endorses this view). Instead, it's that a strong correlation between talent - innate or not - and economic success is no indicator of a just society....

Stumbling and Mumbling
Meritocracy, Mobility & Fairness
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle