Equality

You can be sure that, when you start hearing stories about the income & wealth gap, or the rich getting richer & the poor getting poorer, there will be some push to make everyone equal. This is accomplished in the ideal minds of Communists by redistributing the wealth from the haves to the have-nots. This entire logic is flawed on so many levels as to make me sick.

Equality in a free capitalist society means the equal opportunity for each person to avail him/herself of what the free market offers. It in no way means that everyone's results will be equal. The people who bemoan the big disparity in wealth conveniently ignore that there are some very good reasons for that inequality. In most cases, it is based on the choices people have made. The best example is with people begrudging the money some doctors earn. The truth is that very few of those envious people have the persistence or strength of character to do what it takes to make it through medical school to become a doctor. Those are sacrifices that most people just wouldn't do.

Why then is it wrong to reward the ones who do make those sacrifices well for their efforts? Why does some high school drop-out, who sits on his butt all day smoking cigarettes and watching Jerry Springer feel entitled to the same financial rewards as someone who went into hock up to his eye-balls and spent a decade in school? Worse still, why do our rulers feel justified in confiscating what the hard worker has and giving it to the lazy bum?

For an interesting take on making everyone equal, P.J. O'Rourke covered it well in this speech from 1997.

KMK
- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 9/26/2002 09:22:00 PM Send this post: