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When a company's core values emphasized meritocratic values, those in managerial positions awarded a larger monetary reward to the male employee than to an equally performing female employee. Castilla and Bernard termed their counter intuitive result "the paradox of meritocracy."

"Primary school admission policies come in different phases. The highest priority is given to applicants with blood ties to a school (Phases 1 and 2A). The remaining places go to other applicants in Phases 2B and 2C, with priority given to those who live closest to the school. Without alumni or blood tie connections, the only way to get into an elite school is by moving close to the school. Liang and Warrier found that in order to move within one kilometer of a school ranked 50 places higher, a typical family has to pay a premium of 131,000 Singapore Dollars. This premium costs about 30% more than the average household income, massively pricing out households hoping to send their children to higher-ranked schools. Not only does one have to pay more to get into a 'good' school, Liang and Warrier also discover massive inequalities in Phase 1 and 2A admissions. Grouping housing prices by Clusters, they find that these better schools in more expensive neighborhoods already have a higher Take-Up Rate (TUR, which is the spaces taken up by the end of 2A). In schools like Nanyang Primary School, children of alumni, management, and staff take up 90% of available seats, severely reducing the enrollment chances of people with no connections to the school. This accentuates the privilege of elites in propping up the futures of their children, undermining meritocracy while marching steadily towards 'parentocracy'."

The meritocracy issue about whether some people are "advantaged or disadvantaged'' through no merit of their own has actually morphed into something else in recent time. It's not so much about how a person managed to accumulate the merits, but what exactly ''meritorious'' refers to. Clearly, the G is trying to get people to look at merit in broader ways than merely academic grades. So the new mantra is that being an expert technician or craftsman is also good. Nothing, however, is said about what merit ultimately translates into - money and power. So try as anyone might to redefine merit, we're always up against the almighty M. It's the way we are, transactional beings who laud ourselves on being pragmatic when we might really be grasping mercenaries who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

"If we play up an East-West dichotomy on concepts concerning social relations-where terms with an allegedly Western origin therefore become inapplicable here-then one could likewise argue that we should rethink our use of terms like 'meritocracy' and 'multiculturalism', because these too originated from the same part of the globe as 'blackface'."

"If you're in an advantaged position in society, believing the system is fair and that everyone could just get ahead if they just tried hard enough doesn't create any conflict for you … [you] can feel good about how [you] made it," said Erin Godfrey, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University's Steinhardt School. But for those marginalized by the system-economically, racially, and ethnically-believing the system is fair puts them in conflict with themselves and can have negative consequences.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

How the sex bias prevails SHANKAR VEDANTAM May 15, 2010

for most careers the company studied, PayScale found that the pay gap is largely the result of outside factors. Within a specific job, before controlling for outside factors the typical female worker earns pay that is only 90 percent of the typical male worker's pay; after controlling for these variables, she earns 94 percent of the typical male worker's pay. For jobs paying below $100,000, the gap narrows further. The implication is that in most jobs where a wage gap exists, it is probably not due to overt discrimination, with bosses deciding, Mad-Men-style, that women should receive unequal pay for equal work. Rather, in most jobs, the different career choices that men and women make - or perhaps the different career opportunities men and women have available to them - account for big differences in pay, says  Al Lee, PayScale's director of quantitative analysis.

"It's very easy to throw the prize at the kids who finish the race first, but always look at the incline they faced. That will tell you much more."

"genes matter more when you equalize environmental influences in the United States, but not in many other countries.  By the way, this also holds if you control for race and the greater racial diversity of the United States.  One possibility is that there are greater environmental differences to be equalized in America in the first place, compared to say the Netherlands, one country where the gradient is quite different.  In any case an interesting piece."

If you base a society on a conception of self that is about achievement, not character, you will wind up with a society that is demoralized; that puts little emphasis on the sorts of moral systems that create harmony within people, harmony between people and harmony between people and their ultimate purpose.

In the slow-growing, hierarchical societies leading up to the 20th century, he said, the most important factor determining your economic prospects was the class into which you were born; from Italy to India, the poor stayed poor and the rich stayed rich. By the mid-20th century, though, the most crucial factor was the country of your birth. In the U.S. and Western Europe, rags-to-riches stories became common, if not routine. Maybe, Zucman warned, the 20th century was an egalitarian anomaly and inherited wealth would again dominate. The question, he said, is "how to have a meritocratic society when so much of wealth comes from the past."

"My fear is that in reserving an election for the Malays, we have unintentionally ended up reinforcing stereotypes instead. Which is why a Malay friend of mine lamented that should Madam Halimah win, her star will not shine as bright because there will always be many with the sentiment that if she was "so good, she would win an open election".  A young non-Malay professional I met at a Hari Raya gathering at my friend's place over the weekend also told me frankly that, in his view, the election was not meritocratic. As much as he believes that Madam Halimah is a great candidate, he added dryly that a reserved election feeds into the stereotype of Malays just not being good enough. I don't think this is an isolated view. After all, a Malay candidate will not have to compete with 85 per cent of Singaporeans in his or her bid for the Presidency even if he or she has met the  minimum - albeit high - criteria for qualification.  So it's not the most meritorious person who gets the job."