It’s common knowledge that the Liberals want equality. Equality is good, but how exactly do you define it?
All my life, I’ve constantly heard the Conservatives say how the Liberals define equality as meaning “Equal misery,” meaning that if someone is making a lot more money than other people, their salary should be lowered and distribute their surplus money to the other employees.
Is this really the case? If not, then please explain what it actually is, and please explain what you mean by redistribution of wealth.
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It’s common knowledge that the Liberals want equality. Equality is good, but how exactly do you define it?
All my life, I’ve constantly heard the Conservatives say how the Liberals define equality as meaning “Equal misery,” meaning that if someone is making a lot more money than other people, their salary should be lowered and distribute their surplus money to the other employees.
Is this really the case? If not, then please explain what it actually is, and please explain what you mean by redistribution of wealth.
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All people should have the same chance of becoming rich, and the people who become rich should become rich because of the merits of things they did for the market. That’s what liberals believe.
>It’s common knowledge that the Liberals want equality.
Do you not want this?
Equal rights, not equal outcome. Both you and I get the right to buy from a restaurant, but what we choose to order is up to us.
Equity is “fairness or justice in the way people are treated…freedom from disparities in the way people of different races, genders, etc. are treated,” typically adjusting for past or environmental injustices. So the poorer or dense areas get public transit so anyone has the right to travel around and access the restaurants. Or food stamps so even the poor can eat.
“Equal misery” is a wildly insultingly absurd thing for conservatives to say, because we don’t want anyone to be miserable.
As I understand… equality is when we’re running a race under the same rules
Equity is when we also try to account for unfair factors, like the fact that one racer might have a broken leg.
In that situation equality is insufficient because even though we’re both beholden to the same rules, your busted leg severely disadvantages you
How about this: homelessness in the US could be solved for a generation with one 20 billion dollar program.
Instead we have billionaires cutting aid programs to become trillionaires.
Distills it right down
Equality: All people are treated equally under the law, and in governmental systems. An additional level is when they are also treated equally by society at large, but that’s hard or impossible to measure.
Equity: All people have equal outcomes. Same salary, same degrees, etc. It’s not achievable or even desirable. Nobody wants this.
Equity of opportunity: All people have the same opportunities and resources. EG, everyone has the same access to schooling, the same wage for the same position, etc. How successful they are at seizing those opportunities is up to them. This is the only type of equity that may actually be achievable.
The thing is, the wealthy use a disproportionate amount of tax dollars compared to the average American as well. Corporations rely on public education & federal funding towards colleges to educate their workers and reduce input costs like training. Or think of Amazon, the amount of trucks they use disproportionally wears down infrastructure. But Jeff Bezos never had to pay for/build those roads & indirectly profits off of them.
Also, redistribution supports the growth of the American economy. Healthier & more educated Americans means less spending on welfare programs & boosts worker output. The wealthy only accumulate wealth thru their employees, who they continually try to underpay & exploit.
Redistribution is about giving people their fair share and making the playing field more equitable. The wealthy oppose this because most are rich thru nepotism, not because they “worked harder” than everyone else. That’s the reason they want to cut education spending, they can’t compete.
Most liberals, and keep in mind, we’re not a homogenous group, believe in equality of opportunity, but not necessarily equality of outcome.
Equity? Eh, I honestly don’t know any liberals who talk about that outside of intro to sociology classes. But to me, it means that some people may need more help than others to get a fair shot at winning.
I’ve shared this story on reddit before. I used to be an applications developer for a fortune 500 company.
It was mostly white and asian males. I got an award once. Huge award and the CEO flew us out to a resort for a celebration. during the dinner, I looked around: not one black person. Not one. There were probably 200 people in that room.
So, equity would mean acknowledging that, for instance, it appears that white and asian males know they can have a career in tech. but maybe the message isn’t getting out to people of color and women. So, you may have a “woman in tech” event.
Doesn’t mean you’re going to take a person who lacks qualifications. But maybe you do more outreach with women than with white and asian men. Maybe you make sure women coders get a good mentor. We used to have mentorship programs with a local high school that was almost all black. Maybe make sure those kids know they can go to college, they can work in tech.
I know it’s a popular right wing talking point that to make everyone equal, you just take things away from people until everybody has very little. technically, that’s equal.
I have literally never, ever, ever heard a liberal say that. Keep in mind, liberals are the most educated political group. We believe in working hard. We believe in taking tough jobs. We believe we should be rewarded if we do.
But we also believe that a person shouldn’t starve if they don’t know how to code. Their kids shouldn’t get an inferior education.
Rich people shouldn’t be so rich they can alter the course of the nation, history and elections. Everyone should be free to be as rich as they want, but they should be paying taxes that reflect the benefit they get from living in this society.
I’m not inherently against the class system, but I believe nobody should get seconds until everyone has had firsts. So we need to scrape as much money as needed off the top until the classes who are below subsistence level no longer exist. Everything in the middle is fine, but the ultra wealthy should not be allowed to keep all of their wealth unless everyone is at minimum fed and housed.
You say you believe in equality under the law. So it would follow you understand and agree with why individuals have a right to a defense lawyer? That’s what we mean by equity. Equality would mean everyone has to supply their own lawyer, or everyone has the exact same state appointed lawyer. Equity means people are treated fairly, not the exact same.
Conservatives are the people who push homogeneity, normativity, and equal misery. Conservatives believe everyone should live by their personal morals. Conservatives have no concept of equality because they believe in inherent inequality. It’s the foundation of their moral basis, that there are good and bad people and good people do this and bad people do that.