On mouths and silver spoons

A NEW Hoover Institution report says that in America’s free enterprise system, individual economic outcomes are the product of a combination of three elements: aptitude, work effort, and choice of occupation. New Republic writer Jon Chait loudly harrumphs and says: bull feathers. To him, the conservative think tank's findings embody "a lot of right-wing delusions about income inequality ... [and] is obviously written to minimize the role of luck. It acknowledges that Bill Gates made more money by choosing to become a software mogul than by choosing to be a high school math teacher. But, of course, Gates benefited enormously not just from his family situation (they were rich) but from the timing of his birth, which put him in the work force at a moment when computing technology was set to explode. If he had been born a decade or two earlier, he probably would have been an anonymous lab geek." Chait concludes that the "right-wing worldview is based on a moral premise about the relationship between merit and wealth that is demonstrably false." Hmm. Interesting. Rings true. Read the piece here and draw your own conclusions.