Newspaper Reader offers – Reader never forget that Brooks became the protege of William F. Buckley Jr.: In sum Brooks whole career was the product of that singular advantage!
May 16, 2025
Editor: It can’t really be a surprise that Mr. Brooks focus in on ‘elite intitutions’ ?
Two examples of Mr. Brooks’ sources: According to a 2023 article by Rachel Shin in The Atlantic, The Atlantic, Rogé Karma and Derek Thompson
Editor: Brook’s attempts to diagnose this vexing problem:
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Maybe the core problem is the overproduction of elites — that we’re churning out more knowledge worker graduates than there are knowledge worker jobs. Or maybe it’s just a feature of online life. It’s easier to apply to stuff, and with more applicants, the competition grows ferocious. According to an article in Business Insider, the average knowledge worker job opening now receives 244 applications, compared with just 93 as recently as 2019. One young woman lamented to me that she wished she’d been young in the 1990s; it would have been easier. I told her I was relatively young in the ’90s, and it was.
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Editor: Look to the storied careed of Walter Lippmann, the student of William James and George Santayana who deified the Technocrat, as a check against Too Much Democracy!
Editor: Mr.Brooks closes his essay/intervention on those ‘golden children’ : Mr. Brooks is a benefactor of the largess of William F. Buckley Jr. …
I should close by reiterating the fact that the people I’m writing about here are the meritocracy’s alleged winners. The valedictorian class. The golden children. Are they just whining through their privilege? Maybe a little. Young Americans who came of age in 1860 or 1916 or 1932 or 1941 weren’t exactly living on Easy Street.
Nonetheless, these conversations — and all the research I’ve read on everything from smartphones to the psychic effects of the meritocracy to the rising mental health crisis among the young — point to one conclusion: It’s just phenomenally hard to be young right now. There must be an easier way to grow up.
Newspaper Reader.
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