Hello, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC, where a leading academic is today arguing that the idea of the American dream is finally dead.

In the Ivy League, there are more students from households in the top 1% of the income distribution than from the entire bottom half.

Economic inequality is now producing a bigger difference in school achievement

than American apartheid once did. Yes, meritocracy, a myth, he argues, but is that true

across the Western world? One of the UK's top universities disagrees. We're invested in getting the

best students from different backgrounds because diversity of backgrounds

means diversity of thought. So how to rise to the top in the modern world. Business Daily from the BBC.

The traditional view of many Western democracies, perhaps the US above all, has been of free market economies built to promote talent and excellence.

The premise of the American dream, as it's known, that anyone with skill, desire and perseverance can make it to the top.

It is a strikingly enduring idea.

But in recent years, the fallout from the

global financial crisis and the inexorable rise of economic inequality have got many

wondering. This month, a leading US academic and author, Daniel Markovits, has written a damning

indictment of what he claims is a dangerous and destructive myth in the U.S.

He's calling his book The Meritocracy Trap,

how America's foundational myth feeds inequality, dismantles the middle class, and devours the elite.

We've decided to examine his arguments in some detail today.

See what you think.

What we mean by meritocracy is that people get ahead based on their own accomplishments

rather than their parents' social class or their race or their gender or some other attribute.

We think of it as a way of giving everybody a fair shot at success.

And the point of the book is that, in fact, it's not that at all.

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