The top of the heap in the Chinese government, the pinnacle of political power, and apparently also of financial success, appears to be appointment to the Standing Committee of the Politburo. An article in Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times said six of the seven men tapped for appointment to the standing committee are the sons of former top officials of the Chinese government. According to the LA Times, this is not unusual in Asia, and many countries show a very similar pattern, as evidenced in Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Singapore and both Koreas. In China they’re dubbed the “princelings.” China, a communistic state, is ostensibly a meritocracy, open and flexible, where one can rise through merit. The elevation of the princelings would seem to argue against that.
At that point I began to wonder if the United States is any different. Our mythology is that anyone with grit, energy and brains can rise through the system and become political, powerful, and perhaps also rich, in the process.
I decided to take a look at the top of the American heap: The leadership of the U.S. Senate, both present and past, and also the top 10 CEOs of Fortune 100 companies to try and measure the reality against the myth.
At the very top of the political pyramid, clearly, is President Obama, from a single parent household, and Biden. Both are from very modest backgrounds and would have to be judged as people who rose on merit. George W. Bush clearly came from political aristocracy, but Cheney did not. After a rocky academic start, he graduated from the University of Wyoming with a B.A., and later an M.A., and rose on his own merit.
Looking at the political leadership of the Senate, both Democrat and Republican, most came from families of relatively modest means and some even dirt poor, and most graduated not from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford or the Ivies, but typically from local colleges and law schools. On the Republican side I looked at Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Trent Lott and John Kyle, and on the Democratic side Harry Reid, Richard Durbin, Chuck Schumer and Patty Murray. Almost all came from family backgrounds that couldn’t have given them any boost up the success ladder. The few who did graduate from prestigious colleges or law schools were outstanding scholars and clearly there on their own merit.
Next I took a look at the CEOs from the “Fortune 100” companies and looked at the first 10 on the list of America’s largest corporations. The pattern didn’t seem very different than the top politicians. Our largest companies are: Wal-Mart, Exxon, Chevron, GE, Bank of America, Conoco-Phillips, AT&T, Ford, JP Morgan and Hewlett- Packard. The CEOs graduated from Georgia Tech, University of Texas-Austin, Dartmouth, Brown, University of Central Oklahoma, Kansas, Tufts, Baylor and Nebraska. The colleges appear to be a mix of public and private, and there looks to a multitude of ladders to success and wealth at least in that generation.
Perhaps the larger question is: Where are we now and has it all changed?
When I graduated from UCLA law school in the mid ‘60s the cost of law school was roughly $500 per year. You could get by living on $200 per month, which you could earn, which meant that an individual could put themselves through law school. Today, UCLA Law School, which is a state school and part of the University of California, costs $41,000 per year for California residents for tuition. Add on to that the cost of books, rent and living expenses, and it’s up to $50,00 to $60,000 per year to live modestly. Unless you have significant family money, students are coming out of a state law school owing easily $100-$200,000, in a job market where jobs are very scarce, and many experienced lawyers are taking jobs the beginners used to get. Upward mobility through education, at least law school education, is a much more iffy proposition than it used to be. In the 1960s the state contributed a significant portion of the costs of the UCLA Law School. Today, the state’s contribution is small and the school has to support itself with tuition and fundraising for the endowment. It takes years to build up a sizeable endowment for a law school like UCLA, which was established in 1948, so it’s predictable that unless the state invests more in the future, a road to upward mobility will continue to shrink, and we may end up being more like China than we like to believe.