Every Supreme Court justice went to Harvard or Yale. One in 10 CEO’s of major companies are named John or David. Eighty percent of job offers come from personal relationships.
In recent years, the left has focused on deconstructing meritocracy by arguing that privilege elevates rich people, white people and people named John or David to undeserved positions of power. They have fought for a more inclusive American dream, where hard work can make any child successful, regardless of identity. In this view, dismantling oppressive systems of privilege and patriarchy can open the doors of opportunity to all Americans.
But the doors of opportunity will always be closed to the poor. Meritocracy in any conception cannot counter inequality because money buys merit. 
The privileged child who grows up with two parents, never goes to school hungry and graduates from the university of her choice without crushing student loan debt will be more competent and reliable than the child who grows up ingrinding poverty.
In spite of the image of the resourceful, street-smart kid rising from hardship, the reality of childhood poverty is brain damage. Scientific American reports the level of stress poor children face leads to more than slight academic disadvantage: children who grow up in families below the federal poverty line have gray matter volumes 8 to 10 percent below normal development.
Most politicians have an anecdote about their humble beginnings, or if they were inconveniently rich from birth, how their parents or grandparents were scrappy enough to make it to the top. But romanticizing upward mobility instead of addressing the shocking amount of economic inequality in America is dishonest and disrespectful to the millions of poor Americans whose children will likely remain poor.
Kids born into the poorest fifth of American households have a 7.5 percent chance of cracking the richest fifth according to the Boston Globe. What makes these pitiful odds intolerable is the gulf between rich Americans and poor Americans.
The poorer half of Americans own 1 percent of the country’s wealth according to the Congressional Budget Office. Mother Jones reports that the Walton family, the heirs to the Walmart fortune, are wealthier than 42 percent of Americans combined.
Our institutions are ostensibly meritocratic, sending the best to the Ivy Leagues, Wall Street or Silicon Valley, but they perpetuate inequality because merit is biased toward the rich. SAT scores and GPA’s work well as indicators of how well a student will perform in college, but they can not swing open the doors of opportunity for economically disadvantaged students.
Instead of waving away unbearable inequality with pretenses of upward mobility, America needs to support its poor.
Because poverty correlates with many things on which society casts moral judgment — obesity, violence, academic failure or family dysfunction — supporting the poor requires a dramatic reimagining of meritocracy.
Criminal justice should emphasize rehabilitating and reintegrating people, instead of further alienating unscrupulous elements of society. Higher education, the most effective mechanism of upward mobility, should not be viewed exclusively through the privileged lens of four-year, residential colleges when many poor Americans can only study part time. Income inequality needs to return to the forefront of the national conversation.
Rhetoric in support of meritocracy should be viewed with intense skepticism if it comes at the exclusion of the poor.
We’re only as good as the least of us.
Danny Bugingo can be reached at [email protected]