A friend once told me that conservative economic policy has and will maintain “equality of opportunity”, whereas the socialists wants to change things so that we would have “equality of result”.
At first glance, “equality of opportunity” makes sense – individuals should be driven by their own initiative to make the most rational economic decisions, and become responsible for their own standard of living. However, if we look at the real world today, not everyone gets to start on the same footing. To deny this is to deny the statistics on how children inherit their parents’ social class – the rich do in fact stay rich, while the poor stay poor. Without the belief that we do have equal opportunity, the rest of the thought structure falls apart.
So when we look at economic policy today, equal opportunity goes hand in hand with personal accountability and the privatization of social services. For some under this ideological banner, they also are convinced that social services are immoral because it takes away individual responsibility, creating paupers, higher taxes, and “freeloaders”. They also feel that if they looked at the people who failed in the rat race, they would be able to tell them what they did wrong.
This of course, is the same friend who went to Pepperdine, (a university in Malibu, California), completely on grant and aid money. His own hypocrisy aside, he began to explain what “equality of result” was all about. Ultimately, it is everyone ending on the same grounds. Where that would be (as in after college? or on our death bed?) is still unclear. This would technically remove the initiative of individuals to try to succeed, whose actions generated and maintained this great country.
What would be the point to do this if I’m just going to get paid the same as that? Well, for some, it is the difference from becoming a doctor as opposed to an engineer (or even a grunt at Taco Time). Apparently, it’s not only wages that determine equality of result – this also brings about “re-distribution of wealth”. My friend thinks that his dreams of making $70,000/year will be hampered by re-distribution.
I think most people don’t understand how much money is in this country. I’m not talking about the money in the doctor’s wages, or the money in the small business owner’s pocket. I’m talking about the money in the largest corporations, in CEO pay, in our health care industry. We’re referring to the top 1% of people owning 99% of the wealth. And just to clarify, there is a difference between wealth and income.
Wealth is an asset that can generate more income and wealth. Income is wages, salary, tips, or etc. In other words, wealth is longer lasting than income, although income can be used to invest in wealth, like a house for example. So for the 1% who owns practically all the wealth in this country, somehow these people are excluded from the picture of “redistribution”.
Anti-socialists always had this picture instilled by the USSR’s example – that the middle class will become poorer as a result of redistribution. We remember that Stalin’s dekulakisation not only exterminated the better-off peasants, but blamed them for the nation’s poverty – he sought to make the poorer classes better off on the dime of the middle class.
This is why a lot of the happy-to-be lower-middle class folks (we’re talking people who make 30-40,000/year) complain about the government helping the poor. These people worked hard to have what they have, why should they pay taxes to help lazy bums, and why should we have socialized health care, etc? This is like the bedniaks and seredniaks of the USSR. These people see redistribution in a frame that excludes the truth about the wealth in this country.
Read, learn, and redefine.
