Quote:
Interviewer: You emphasize, in the end, that there is a lot that we can learn from the Nordic countries. What is one of the best lessons?
MB: At least aim for economic and gender equality. Everyone benefits, so it’s worth a shot, no?
Yes, one of Bernie's chief issues: rising economic inequality. So let's start there. [And to keep on topic: how about racial inequality?]
Quote:
We may not want to believe it, but the United States is now the most unequal of all Western nations. To make matters worse, America has considerably less social mobility than Canada and Europe.
As the sociologists Stephen McNamee and Robert Miller Jr. point out in their book, “The Meritocracy Myth,” Americans widely believe that success is due to individual talent and effort. Ironically, when the term "meritocracy” was first used by Michael Young (in his 1958 book “The Rise of the Meritocracy”) it was meant to criticize a society ruled by the talent elite. “It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit,” wrote Young in a 2001 essay for the Guardian. “It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.” The creator of the phrase wishes we would stop using it because it underwrites the myth that those who have money and power must deserve it (and the more sinister belief that the less fortunate don’t deserve better).