WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE COMMON GOOD?

 Michael Sandel gives is the following information in a chapter entitled RECOGNIZING WORK (published 2020). People without a college degree could find good paying jobs from World War Two into the 1970s. They could support a family comfortably and live a good middle-class life."Over the past five decades, the earnings differed between college and high school graduates--what economists call the 'college premium'--has doubled. In 1979, college graduates  made about 40 percent more than high school graduates; by the 2000s they made 80 percent more.'"

From 1979 to 2016, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United 'States fell from 19.5 million to 12 million, but productivity increased and workers reaped a smaller share of what they produced. Simultaneously, executives and shareholders captured a larger share. In the late 1970s, CEOs of major American companies made 30 times more than the average worker and by 2014, they made 300 times more. 

Per capita income increased 85 percent since 1979, yet white men without a college degree make less now than they did then. What this has been saying louder and louder is that the work of the working man is less valued by the culture than that of the man who gets an education and works with his brains. Thus, the idea has begun to say over the past several decades that the market legitimates lavish rewards winners based on the merit of their deserving to be where they are. It also says to the losers that they are responsible for where they are and deserve what they get. We now have a meritocracy based on personal responsibility and we get what we deserve and what this really means is that the winners take all and deserve their reward. Onm the other hand, it also means the losers deserve to be losers and they don't count.

What tis all really means is that we no longer have any value for the common good and we are victims of our own sorting system in which the winners take more and more and the losers receive less and less--we have reverted back to the law of the jungle that is SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST and the eventual destruction of social structure and society.

Darren Walker, President of Ford Corporation, calls Sandel's writing a seminal  work. The Tyranny of Merit detly exposes the flaws and fallacies of meritoratic philosophy and suggests Sandel makes a compelling case for uprooting inequality and building a fairer society shaped by true principles of justice, which I would suggest are found only in the Biblical faith of Christianity.

Preet Bharara, former attorney for the southern district of New York, calls it a must read and describes it as a revelatory assessment of pervasiveness unfairness in our society, driven in part by a naive and myopic reliance on the notion of merit. Over and over, we are confronted with what's become of the common good?

If you  be believe in liberty and justice for all, you will want to read Michael J, Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit, published by Farar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 2020.  This is walkingwithwarner,blogspot.com

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