(Excerpt from Ben Bernanke’s speech at the Baccalaureate Ceremony at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey)
A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in terms of their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in terms of educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many ways difficult to enumerate: these are the people who reap the largest rewards.