In this lecture, Markovits will explore how over the course of the past half-century, the United States has invented a new, unprecedented, and extreme form of economic hierarchy, which might be called meritocratic inequality—not because it is justified, but because it is tied to winning at competitions in school and at work.  Meritocracy, invented as the handmaiden of equality of opportunity, has in fact become the single biggest obstacle to equality of opportunity in the United States today.  A meritocratic elite concentrates human capital—both education and work—within its own caste.  Feedback loops between exclusive education and skill-biased innovation entrench and expand elite advantages, shrink and marginalize the middle class, and allow elite families to pass their caste-privileges down through their generations.  Economic growth slows, and social and political life in the United States become increasingly corrupt.