http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/inequality-and.html
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One of the most pernicious effects of America's so-called meritocracy is indeed the attitude of smug entitlement it often produces. And that kind of attitude is by no means limited to Harvard grads. A distressingly large number of people in our society seem to believe that going to college is proof that they're "smarter" than their non-college-educated fellow citizens, and therefore more deserving of respect, status, and the comforts of middle-class life.
Of course, not going to college is no cause for shame, any more than attending college should necessarily be a cause for pride. In the U.S., low income is likely to be a huge barrier to going to college, even among the highest scoring students.
I saw this entitled attitude was on display in spades during the 2005 New York City transit strike. I remember how some commenters on the blog of the late, great Steve Gilliard expressed disgust and incredulity that people who didn't even go to college (i.e., transit workers) had job security, decent benefits, and salaries of 50 or 60K a year. How dare they! Gilly, of course, had no patience for that crap, and passionately, exhaustively, argued with those commenters, explaining just how and why they were deeply and utterly wrong. But it was disturbing nevertheless, because many of those anti-transit worker folks had seemed to be perfectly good, Bush-loathing, Iraq-war-hating liberals.
The counterpart to the smug entitlement of the "winners" in our society is the shame and self-loathing of the losers. In her recent book about unemployment, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about the feelings of inadequacy and self-blame of those who, through no fault of their own, lost their jobs. New York Times Louis Uchitelle reported similar attitudes in the laid off workers he interviewed for his book.
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