Reynolds' Law

Reynolds's argument is that degrees, home ownership and the rest were consequences of a set of habits rather than causes of them, so a policy that supplies the marker without the habit delivers the appearance and not the result. The counter-argument is that the markers are partly causal, which is an empirical question the formulation assumes away.

In practice

• A firm that gives everyone a senior title has changed the titles.
• A programme that funds the credential without the capability produces credentialed people and the same capability distribution.

Possible explanations

The proposed explanation is that the markers of middle-class status were consequences of a set of habits rather than causes of them, so supplying the marker without the habits leaves the underlying position unchanged.

In its favour

The concern it names is real, and evaluations of subsidised credentials do find weak returns where the underlying skills are absent, which fits the argument.

Against it

It is an argument by analogy published on a blog rather than a tested claim, and it does not deal with the cases where the marker itself opens doors, as home ownership does through wealth accumulation.

Standing

Published on a blog rather than in a reviewed literature, and spread by linking. An argument by analogy rather than a tested claim; the returns to education and home ownership are contested empirically, and the causal direction it asserts is the whole question.

Subject

Law & Politics

Essay

Competing accounts of how power works