Wednesday, April 11, 2012

A Radical Egalitarian Speaks

Most egalitarian redistribution schemes are couched in terms of efficiency, but this Stanford sociologist says to screw that:


Unfortunately this all presupposes that money can buy what is needed to make the elite suburbs and poor inner cities generate equal results. When the expected equality does not materialize, more coercive policies must be introduced, the end game would be extremely ugly.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cities (even inner cities) aren't that poor anymore - they've been gentrified; Thanks hipsters! If you want to see poverty check out the near ring suburbs.

Anonymous said...

I guess you can define words any way you want... Is North Philly no longer "inner city"?

DPG said...

The one thing anti-inequality types tend to ignore is that a lot of inequality is generated by the private investment of parents in their children (get them into good schools, help them get good grades, get them a job, encourage them to find a good spouse, bequeath them money). In order to have true equality of opportunity, you'd have to take child rearing out of the hands with parents. Regardless of the moral uproar this would cause, it would also remove one of the primary incentives that people have to work hard later in life.

Anonymous said...

Ask this bozo's wife what she wants for her kids?

Dan Kurt

Anonymous said...

The point is equality of opportunity.

If conservatives don't believe in this, then let's just go back to days of nobles and kings.

The Recapitulator said...

This commercial still holds up with respect to my initial reaction to these kinds of arguments (read: double facepalm)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZmHDEa0Y20