By admonishing his colleagues to work together for the good of the country, McCain showed why we shouldn’t write off his character and credibility.
meritocracy
Posted inFeatured, Politics
I Went to Harvard Law with Anthony Scaramucci. Here’s What He Was Like.
Like the president whom Scaramucci would go on to serve, getting rich was the goal, and winning was everything.
Posted inMagazine, March/April/May 2017
Charles Peters on Recapturing the Soul of the Democratic Party
In a new book, the Washington Monthly founding editor explains where liberal elites went wrong — and suggests a way forward.
Posted inMagazine
The SAT Meritocracy
Several years ago in these pages, I reviewed a book by E. Digby Bakzell, the sociologist of the American elite (he invented the term WASP), and heartily endorsed Baltzell’s observation that the old American “Protestant Establishment” (another term Baltzell invented) had been replaced by a new “SAT meritocracy.” I suggested that the rise of the latter […]
Posted inMagazine
Group Therapy: The Answer to Merit Pay
A few years ago I came upon a small company that seemed to provide a strong rebuttal to the Monthly’s longtime support of merit pay. Instead of basing salaries on individual performance, it paid everyone the same— clerical workers, professionals, sales reps, accountants, even the artists. The exception was the owner and his assistant, but […]
Posted inMagazine
The Merit Racket: How SATs are running the GNP
“Henry Adams could see easy ways of making a hundred blunders,” wrote Henry Adams in The Education of Henry Adams. “He could see no likely way of making a legitimate success.” Poor Adams. It was his curse to be the first truly modern man of the American East Coast, in that he spent his entire life worrying […]
