I really don't know much about David Brooks who writes for the New York Times, but I'm willing to bet that he has never spent much time doing work besides writing in a large corporation.
His article today, "The Populist Myths on Income Inequality," (NY Times Select required) asserts that workers are actually doing well and that jobs aren't insecure.
I actually know a fair number of corporate refugees who would argue with many of Brooks' statements. The one that really gets me is the following.
In other words, the market isn’t broken; the meritocracy is working almost too well. It’s rewarding people based on individual talents. Higher education pays off because it provides technical knowledge and because it screens out people who are not organized, self-motivated and socially adept.
Most people that I know believe that Scott Adams of Dilbert fame lives within their organization. I have little doubt that our corporate culture is in much poorer shape than Mr. Brooks would have us believe. If you haven't seen a corporation where promotions are more related to whom you know than the skill level of the people trying for a promotion, you probably haven't done a lot of looking. I'm sure there are good corporations out there, but there are plenty who aren't using their people effectively specifically because the whole idea of "meritocracy" is broken.
Large corporations typically reward those know how to manage upwards. I'm not sure that's a great skill for companies to cultivate. If things are working so well in corporations, why are our auto companies doing so poorly and why do we have a huge options backdating scandal? Perhaps Mr. Brooks needs some real corporate experience on which to base his opinions.
Maybe after he watches a corporation get rid of some of their best people like I've recently seen, he might understand that corporate reality and what he is writing about are two different things. As one person commented recently on someone who got a promotion, "He got the job because he'll do whatever he's told, no questions asked." That's not exactly a "meritocracy."
Since I wrote this last night, Paul Krugman has come out with a piece,"Whining Over Discontent," that does a really good job of putting some real perspective on the issue with numbers to back up his argument.
More broadly, right-wing commentators would like you to believe that
the economy’s winners are a large group, like college graduates or
people with agreeable personalities. But the winners’ circle is
actually very small. Even households at the 95th percentile — that is,
households richer than 19 out of 20 Americans — have seen their real
income rise less than 1 percent a year since the late 1970’s. But the
income of the richest 1 percent has roughly doubled, and the income of
the top 0.01 percent — people with incomes of more than $5 million in
2004 — has risen by a factor of 5.
I don't always disagree with David Brooks as my posts, "Agreeing with Mr. Brooks" and "Agreeing ten times over with David Brooks on immigration" indicate, but this time he's off base again with his rosy colored view of the corporate world. Krugman's view is much closer to what I have seen in my corporate days.