Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Seven-Inning Felix (13-6) got the victory yesterday, despite (1) pitching only 6 2/3 innings (he tired after throwing 111 pitches) and (2) giving up four earned runs. His earned-run average is a bloated 3.13. Felix is on track for 18.9 victories this season. His team is going nowhere.

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To the Editor:

Re “Biden Is Taking Steps Toward ’16, Supporters Say” (front page, Aug. 2):

The most qualified and accomplished—Joe Biden, John Kerry and Al Gore—are not yet running for president this time, and may well not run again. That says a lot about the sorry state of money, focus groups and media-driven politics today.

Mr. Biden could run unabashedly on the stellar Obama record—a record, despite 24/7 bashing from some media outlets, all Republicans and some Democrats—that stands second to none since Lyndon B. Johnson, or maybe since Franklin D. Roosevelt, a record that Mr. Biden as vice president had no small part in effecting.

JOHN E. COLBERT

Arroyo Seco, N.M.

Note from KBJ: I see that Arroyo Seco has a village idiot.

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To the Editor:

David Brooks (“The Structure of Gratitude,” column, July 28) dubiously characterizes American society as a “capitalist meritocracy.” I suggest that we are more aptly described as a “capitalist inheritocracy.”

Access to the resources needed to develop and demonstrate “merit” are largely inherited. Advantaged families typically sustain their advantages from one generation to the next by investing ample resources in the cultivation of each new generation’s talents.

Disadvantaged families have few such resources to invest, and so are less likely to produce “meritorious” competitors in the capitalist climb.

More generally, this tendency for advantage to beget further advantage, and disadvantage further disadvantage, is what the sociologist Robert K. Merton called the “Matthew effect,” from the biblical scripture that observes, “Unto those who have, more will be given.”

DANIEL RIGNEY

Houston

The writer is the author of “The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage.”

To the Editor:

David Brooks’s contrast between gratitude (and empathy) and the meritocracy of capitalism provides a beautiful distinction between progressivism and conservatism.

RICHARD D. HYMAN

Alamo, Calif.

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