The U.S. Is Home to a Rarified World of High Quality Goods and Services

I learned during a Zoom meeting yesterday that the acceptance rate at Ivy League schools is now 3 – 5% (i.e., the rejection rate is as high as 97%).  When you subtract out those who are admitted merely because their daddy, e.g., Jared Kushner’s father, just donated a new gymnasium, the access to this level of quality education based on merit is close to zero.  That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist; it’s just extremely rare.

This is an example of what could be called the “bifurcation of resources,” meaning that good stuff keeps getting better but rarer, but bad stuff keeps getting worse and more plentiful.

The 10th-ranked tennis player or golfer of today would have been #1 as recently as 50 years ago.  Yet the nation is filling up with uneducated white supremacists, opioid-addicts, QAnon believers, and voters who continue to support an obvious conman and criminal.

There are probably better examples of human excellence than the one shown in this video, but it’s fun to watch, and it shows an amazing level of creativity.