Make TV Work

Too little motivation, and people won't do anything. Too much motivation, and people will do anything. The trick is to have just the right motivation.

Consider a graph of wealth distribution in the United States, which I call the Motivation Curve: It is basically flat for almost everybody, but very steep for the very rich. The problem is that there is little incentive at the bottom to play the game to get ahead--where getting ahead means so little--and too much incentive at the top to cheat stockholders, employees, customers, and the government--where doing so provides such rich rewards.

I think income inequality leads directly to poor average school performance. Poorly performing students and their parents see that additional effort in school isn't going to help them much. They look at the motivation curve and despair. Rich kids, on the other hand, look at the motivation curve and figure that they had damn well better excel in school. Their rewards for doing well are huge, and the penalty for not doing well are equally huge. That is a margin definitely worth badgering a teacher into a higher grade for, and that badgering in turn takes resources away from kids in the middle of the distribution.

So next time you think about inequality in America, think about a neurotic rich kid, badgered teacher, and about us poor sods in the bottom 90%.

Labels: income inequality