Most men are encouraged to assume that, in general, the most powerful and the wealthiest are also the most knowledgeable or, as they might say, the smartest. Such ideas are propped up by many little slogans about those who “teach because they can’t do,” and about “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” But all that such wisecracks mean is that those who use them assume that power and wealth are sovereign values for all men and especially for men “who are smart.” They assume also that knowledge always pays off in such ways, or surely ought to, and that the test of genuine knowledge is such pay-offs. The powerful and the wealthy must be the men of most knowledge, otherwise how could they be where they are? But to say that those who succeed to power must be “smart,” is to say that power is knowledge. To say that those who succeed to wealth must be smart, is to say that wealth is knowledge.
C. Wright Mills, On Knowledge and Power, 1954.
The Punishment of Sloth 
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