Meritocracy In America

6. A meritocracy is a social ideology. The idea is that individuals can earn rewards based off of their individual talents and abilities. It implies that every individual has a fair and equal chance of success from fairly given opportunities. In a true meritocracy, an individual can obtain economic success based solely upon his or her merit, and not based on his or her race, social class, inheritance, or luck. Therefore, in a theoretical meritocracy, inequality is nonexistent. There are a few factors that influenced the idea of a meritocracy in America. The first factor is religion. The European colonists were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. This group’s religious values focused strongly on an individual relationship with God. The people in this group believed that they hard to work extremely hard in order to achieve salvation from God. The next factor is political. After America declared its independence from Great Britain, the Constitution was created with an emphasis on limits of government power over individuals. This is because the founding fathers wanted to protect the American people from tyranny. The next factor is economic. The government decided that it would intervene as little as possible in the markets. This led to free markets and …show more content…
They argue that America is corporate run because large scale corporations own an extremely high percentage of market shares. McNamee and Miller argue that the largest 100 manufacturing firms account for 33% of the value of all manufactured products in America. According to McNamee and Miller, these corporations play such a crucial role in the American economy that if they were to somehow fail, the economy would fail without them, and therefore the entire economy as a whole would collapse. This means that small businesses cannot be the backbone of the American economy because the economy does not truly need them to