As an employee of a large fortune-500 company, i have myself marveled at how shameless proponents of the new caste system are. Jobs X require a degree of level Y; nobody questions it. Free enterprise and equality of opportunity are actually not American values anymore. Old systems of discrimination based on race, family etc have not disappeared, just been replaced. The idea of an individual being evaluated on his own merits and not as part of some group is too radical. Even the employees don't want to be free agents; they don't see themselves as sellers of their own labor but as slaves laboring under masters. Companies have policies and employees follow them, the thought of the employee having policies of his own is as foreign as the idea of getting paid based on value generated, rather than based on a lookup table of education and status in an organization.
