Level playing field? Just world?

[feuervogel]

Horsecrap. And there's a study that shows the far greater prevalence of the belief that people get what they deserve, that the poor are poor because they're lazy, that the rich are rich because they're so virtuous and hard-working, that luck doesn't play into it at all, in America than in the rest of the world.

Data from the World Values Survey [Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote 2001; Keely 2002] show that ... Americans are about twice as likely as Europeans to think that the poor “are lazy or lack willpower” (60 percent versus 26 percent) and that “in the long run, hard work usually brings a better life” (59 percent versus 34–43 percent [Ladd and Bowman 1998]).

Dear neo-liberals, neo-cons, libertarians, and anyone else who believes the world we live in is really actually a meritocracy: IT ISN'T. You're deluding yourselves if you think it is.