I've always loved the notion of the meritocracy.

A meritocracy is where everyone gets what he or she deserves. If you work hard, you'll be fabulously wealthy and endlessly happy.

If you slack off, you'll live in your parents' basement forever.

It's a concept I learned in middle school, when five-syllable words were rare. I just loved the way it sounded. America, a meritocracy. The words ran together into the name of a nation: Ameritocra. "I live in a meritocracy," I would say to motivate myself when I wanted to look through pictures of the Backstreet Boys instead of doing my homework.

Then I would focus on my homework. After all, if I wanted to marry Nick Carter (the blonde one), I would have to work for it. In a meritocracy, you get what you deserve, and Nick Carter deserved more than a girl with a B in algebra.

Of course, times change. I no longer want to marry Nick Carter. And I've become disillusioned with the concept of the meritocracy.

What happened? Well, boy bands became passé and Nick Carter's solo career flopped. And I found out that "meritocracy" is not necessarily a good thing.

I had always thought our founding fathers came up with the idea of the meritocracy while the Declaration of Independence was en route to England.

"Thomas Jefferson, what kind of country should America be?" Paul Revere asks.

"Revere, I think it should be a meritocracy, where you get what you merit," Thomas Jefferson replies.

"Splendid idea! Let's toast to it," Sam Adams says, handing each patriot a beer.

"To the meritocracy!" The three men toast and drink up.

Apparently, the meritocracy was not born in that fashion. Instead, an English academic named Michael Young, who wrote a satirical novel called The Rise of the Meritocracy, coined the phrase in 1958. And it was not meant as a compliment to our egalitarian society (in fact, it was about England, not America).

In Young's fictional meritocracy, children were separated by IQ and then groomed for certain jobs. Those with high IQs were destined for law school, while the below average cleaned the courtroom floors.

Does being born smart make you more worthy, while being born with an average intelligence renders you useless? Of course not. We all know brilliant people who study only when necessary, and people with unremarkable IQs who work hard.

America has embraced a concept that smacks of elitism and, if practiced the way it was intended, would do great damage to our society. If I had my choice between a doctor who slacked through medical school and one who actually paid attention in class, I'd definitely pick the one who cared.

But we don't use the phrase meritocracy exactly the way Young intended. We use meritocracy not just to encompass "intelligence," but also "drive," "ambition" and "passion." We use meritocracy to say that everyone begins life at the same starting line, and how you run the race determines where you end up.

We all know this is not the case. The sum of your effort, attitude and resourcefulness does not equal your status in life. We are all born with different opportunities, finances and perks -- or lack thereof.

Unfortunately, the idea of the meritocracy lets people pretend they deserve what they have.

Take MTV's Rich Girls, Ally Hilfiger (Tommy Hilfiger's daughter) and her friend Jamie Gleicher. They're both absolutely loaded and earned their money from the lucky sperm-egg combinations that beget them -- not from any work of their own. But, they feel guilty about it and need to convince themselves that they are worthy of their wealth.

In one episode, while sitting around a pool at the Hilfiger family estate in the British West Indies, they decide they must have just been really, really good in past lives. Gleicher states that she might be Benjamin Franklin (who she believes "invented the light bulb") or Muhammad Ali (who isn't dead) reincarnated.

The idea that we all get exactly what we deserve is dangerous. By saying that members of the upper class all earned their pools, Hummers and Ivy League degrees, we also say the poor deserve eviction, crime and minimum wage jobs. The fiction of the meritocracy encourages the well off to buy a plasma TV instead of donating money to a scholarship fund.

After all, if a poor student really deserved to go to college, shouldn't he or she earn the money?

Of course not. While there is ample opportunity to improve or mess up whatever situation you were born into, our society is not completely flexible. Because of economic differences, unequal education and other factors, we do not start life at the same place, and it is irresponsible of the wealthy to assume they are more worthy than the poor.

And let's be honest. If this country really were a meritocracy, I'd be marrying a boy band member, because I got an A in eighth grade algebra.