One of the most common and poignant grievances associated with Occupy Wall Street is the lament of recent college graduates, who are either unemployed or underemployed, saddled with massive amounts of college debt. They see a future of financial stability and some measure of personal fulfillment as something that’s an artifact from a bygone era. This is the product of a meritocratic system that has hit a major snag.
Since 1979, the “college wage premium,” the higher pay for college graduates over high school graduates, high school dropouts and community college graduates, has been growing. Since that same time, tuitions and fees have increased by more than 400 percent compared to inflation of 106 percent and the median family wage going up 147 percent. This has led to a huge increase in college loan debt. An economy that cannot produce enough jobs to get unemployment below 9 percent leaves college grads struggling to find jobs, which can lead to a lifetime of lower wages. And so, we have those very same college students and recent college grads occupying Zuccotti Park and getting even Mitt Romney to profess concern about inequality.
On the other hand, the supposed target of the occupation – the financial industry, which has mostly moved to midtown anyway – seems totally deaf to the fact that large swathes of the country blame them for the economic meltdown. The titans of the financial industry, more or less correctly, view themselves as the products of a meritocratic system that rightly rewards their intelligence, education, discipline and hard work. Even if some banks did some bad things, the people in them should not be punished for doing what everyone else tried to do – go the best schools and excel at every point. They don’t see a lack of social justice, but a screwup that unleashed waves of bitterness and resentment.
In 2009, New York magazine published a piece cataloging the viewpoint of the financial elite, then the subject of massive public outcry due to the continued high pay packages for executives at the very same companies that required billions in government aid to stay afloat. One email statement from a Citigroup executive captured the flipside of the meritocratic lament that would erupt two years later: “No offense to Middle America, but if someone went to Columbia or Wharton, (even if) their company is a fumbling, mismanaged bank, why should they all of a sudden be paid the same as the guy down the block who delivers restaurant supplies for Sysco out of a huge, shiny truck?”
While this comes off as just snobby entitlement, in our brave new meritocratic world, such attitudes make a certain type of sense. At their best, schools like “Columbia or Wharton” (or Northwestern!) are open to anyone who has natural talent and is willing to work hard. If you get good grades, the student debt you piled up to attend Wharton will soon evaporate after a few years of working in finance.
And those years will be grueling, with their notorious 100 hour, six-and-seven-day work weeks. The entire system rewards those with just the qualities that ought to be prized: discipline, ambition and a willingness to make sacrifices in the present for rewards in the future. Today, finance rewards intelligence, not being the right type of WASP, as it may have decades ago.
Matt Zeitlin is a Weinberg senior.
He can be reached at [email protected].
