Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 119

on political books
By failing to recognize these realities,
today's emphasis on creating a "true
meritocracy" of talent, something the
Democrats' last two presidents explicitly advocated, allows meritocratic "winners to inhale too deeply of their success," Sandel writes. It allows them to
incorrectly conclude, "If my success is
my own doing, their failure must be
their fault."

hat is to be done? Sandel wants to
mend, not end, meritocracy. Merit
should still play a "role in the allocation
of jobs and social roles." But we should
be more forthright about acknowledging the role of luck. Americans should
show more humility and, with it, strive
for greater equality of condition as well
as equality of opportunity.
To do that, Sandel focuses his policy
recommendation in two arenas: higher
education and the workforce. He would
increase funding for community colleges, which are grossly under-resourced.
At selective colleges, he would find ways
to boost economic diversity. Citing data
showing that selective colleges have
23 times as many rich students as poor
ones, he describes American higher education as "an elevator in a building that
most people enter on the top floor." Sandel would provide admissions preferences for low-income students and eliminate legacy preferences for the children
of alumni.
To make sure that Americans recognize the luck inherent in meritocracy,
Sandel would admit all students to selective colleges by lottery once they reached
a given academic threshold, with the option of giving extra lottery tickets to ensure diversity (all lottery participants,
including those who came from groups
eligible for extra tickets, would need to
meet the same academic threshold). The
lottery would make high school less oppressive for students seeking college admission, and would reduce the hubris of
those admitted to college. In the Varsity Blues scandal, he notes, wealthy parents weren't just trying to advance their
children's financial prospects. (They
could have set up trust funds for that.)
"They wanted something else-the mer-

itocratic cachet that admission to elite
colleges confers," including the ability to
look down on others.
Sandel's other major focus is to find
ways to honor "the dignity of work."
Work, he writes, is "both economic and
cultural. It is a way of making a living
and also a source of social recognition
and esteem." Progressives used to widely
understand this. In 1968, Martin Luther
King Jr. told striking sanitation workers that their labor was as important as
a physician's because if they didn't do
their job, disease would become rampant. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, running for president in 1968, likewise understood that joblessness was damaging
not only because it meant a loss of income. Having a job, he
declared, lets an individual "say to his community, to his family, to
his country, and most
important, to himself, 'I
helped build this country.' " Today, Sandel observes, few progressives
speak that way. They instead mostly view individuals as "consumers"
who want more income,
rather than "producers"
who want their contributions recognized.
To reinforce the dignity of work, Sandel advocates reducing payroll taxes and increasing a tax on financial transactions.
Oddly, however, he says almost nothing
about the need to revive organized labor
in America. Unions are the central instrument for ensuring that workers receive decent pay and benefits, avoid indignities like "just in time" scheduling,
and are generally valued by employers
and the public.
It's an unfortunate omission, given
that unions have waned in the United
States far more than in other countries
facing similar globalization pressures.
This decline is because U.S. laws have
failed to recognize that labor organizing
is a civil right. Employers routinely fire
people for organizing a union because
the penalties for doing so are extreme-

ly weak. To reverse this trend, Congress
should extend the Civil Rights Act of
1991, which provides compensatory and
punitive damages to victims of discrimination based on factors such as race and
sex, to those fired for trying to create
a union.
This reform, of course, will be impossible so long as Republicans hold
the White House. But if Sandel is correct that Trump's election was driven in
part by an uprising against the tyranny
of merit, it should spell good news for
Joe Biden (Syracuse University Law '68),
who comes across as a bighearted politician who doesn't look down on workingclass people. Biden identifies King and
RFK as his "two political heroes," and

To make sure that Americans
recognize the luck inherent in
meritocracy, Sandel would admit
students to selective colleges by
lottery, once they reached a given
academic threshold. This would
make high school less oppressive
for students and reduce the
hubris of those admitted.
echoes their rhetoric on the dignity of
work and family and country. On the
stump, Biden quotes his father, who
once said, "Joey, a job is about a lot more
than a paycheck. It's about your dignity. It's about respect." Biden has taken a
strong stand against exclusionary zoning laws, which physically keep working-class people away from the wealthy.
As we slowly emerge from a pandemic in
which Americans have recognized grocery clerks, truck drivers, and paramedics as everyday heroes, one can hope that
the country will-like Biden-embrace
the dignity of these professions.
Richard D. Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at
the Century Foundation, and is writing a
book about housing segregation.
Washington Monthly 119

Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Monthly - September/October 2020