“Not everyone can be a doctor”, that’s the phrase my parents coined to describe the philosophical concept of capacity. Growing up, my parents would frequently discuss the idea of capacity without putting a formal name to it. As doctors and heads of their practice, dinner often became a rant about the office problems of the day. The more we tried to figure out why these problems were occurring, the more it became clear that my parents were operating with a higher capacity than their office. Capacity, as it is explained later, is the determining factor for the level of difficult work a person can handle.

In America, capacity has transformed, largely, into a function of social class.

My parent’s quote may sound elitist, and it is, but not for the reasons you may think. Simply put, not everyone can enter high-skill professions: statistics makes sure of that. Similarly, not everyone is intelligent enough to become a skilled doctor, lawyer, engineer, or insert profession here. That’s not why the quote is elitist. The quote is elitist because America has a capacity inequality problem.

Capacity is a person’s ability level and maximum potential. It determines how far one can push themselves and how much they can succeed because of it. In America, capacity has transformed, largely, into a function of social class. This is where the issue arises. The stratification of capacity creates a cycle that perpetuates upper-class dominance in all aspects of society.

Wealth is a catalyst to improve capacity. The largest effect wealth has on capacity occurs through experiences and education. America’s upper classes use their means to provide, rightly, the best experiences and education possible for their children. This is not evil; this is what any good parent wants for their children. A problem arises because a majority of parents don’t have the means to send their children to private schools or hire private tutors. Rather, they have to rely on America’s dying and underfunded public schools as their children get left behind. One thing is clear: wealthy children have the advantage from birth. Not only is their education miles ahead of the majority, but they are also raised in environments where they don’t ever have to fear for their basic needs. Wealthy parents are also able to craft healthy environments, ensuring that their children don’t drink lead-tainted water or breathe polluted air.

Experience, similarly, heavily favors the wealthy. From traveling the world to being able to afford therapists, the deck is stacked. Unpaid internships, mission trips, and finding oneself: these activities provide positive experiences as well as networking opportunities. Yet they’re not even options for most. How can you be expected to find a job easily when that wealthy kid with the gig you want went to an elite private college AND took that year-long unpaid internship in NYC? And again the problem is not that wealthy parents want to provide the best for their children, the problem is the inequality of it.

This is very much evident at expensive private institutions like this one. At Middlebury, 67% of students are from the top 10%, and 23% are from the top 1%. Middlebury ranked sixth out of all U.S. colleges for highest median family income at $244,300 (NYTimes). Middlebury doesn’t admit students just because they are rich: they admit students because they are qualified, or rather are capable. It just so happens, unjustly, that the pool of qualified candidates is skewed to favor the affluent. The structural advantages of wealth make those candidates much more qualified relative to the general population.

It should be noted that meritocracy is a lie—a fabrication of equality that blatantly favors the wealthy. Those sacred SAT and ACT scores that got you into Midd correlate with wealth heavily (CNBC). And the capacity advantages of wealth extend to all other domains. The biggest indicator of future success is wealth, not intelligence (Georgetown). It is abundantly clear that our systems favor money over any other factor.

High levels of inequality are incredibly dangerous for society, and America has only been feeding the rich. Wealth inequality is reaching epic proportions, soon to beat levels last seen in the Roaring ‘20s. And this wealth inequality fuels capacity inequality. So while it is a fact that not everyone can become a doctor—we don’t need nor want everyone to be a doctor—we must restructure our society in a way that allows capacity to be a function of the individual and not of the lottery of their birth. We must alter our system so that the structural factors that make it so much easier for the wealthy to stay ahead no longer limit how far anyone else can pursue their American Dream.

Nicholas Sliter ‘23 is climate/political activist and SNEG organizer, majoring in computer science and sociology.