money and merit

One reason it is so difficult for people to think clearly about the relationship of money to merit is that the relationship clearly exists among small, adjacent differences (though imperfectly and subject to corruption), but hardly exists among big, distant differences (though occasionally).

For example, it is false to the point of offensiveness to think that the difference between peoples with high average incomes (say, the Swiss), and those with low average incomes (say, Cambodians), is merit.  Or that the difference between an American with average income and an American amongst the 100 wealthiest is merit.  Not so.  Across these gulfs of difference, merit and wealth hardly correlate.

But merit and wealth (or cost) do correlate reasonably well within small, adjacent groups of difference - that is, within a market.  The more expensive law firm in a given city is not always better, but is a better bet, absent more information.  The more expensive stenographers in a given city are probably better than those who are less expensive.  The more expensive can of soup of the same basic sort (presence or absence of meat, organic or conventional) on the same shelf is very probably better.

With a few sentences' development, this point is readily grasped, indeed one most of us already know.  But money is such a seductively easy, abstract quantity - such an available measuring stick - that it is a matter of constant occupation to some (and itself explains much of the market for success literature) to wonder why someone is a hundred times wealthier.  The reasons for this are unlikely to be within an individual's control.  But what such a person is far less likely to wonder about - but would benefit more from - is why a neighbor or sibling is, say, nearly twice as wealthy.  The reasons for that will usually include some items for action and improvement.