Posted by dahsdebater on 5/22/2021 10:48:00 PM (view original):
Posted by tangplay on 5/21/2021 8:17:00 PM (view original):
What is this referring to? Most people on the left want equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.
With all due respect, I don't think this is true. At all. I think equality of opportunity is what moderate Republicans support, generally. The kind of Republicans who voted for Bush and McCain and Romney, but not Trump.
Let's look at education, the political battlefield most obviously concerned with opportunity. Even moderate Democrats generally support Affirmative Action. They don't bat an eye when scholarships are reserved for women, minorities, LGBTQ persons, and other underprivileged groups. They would be wildly up in arms about a significant scholarship reserved for white men. (FWIW, I also agree with this, as long as the law is neutral. Scholarships for white men are frankly unnecessary; alternatively, one could argue they already exist and are referred to as 'merit-based'). Similarly, though this veers a bit off of education but remains squarely in the realm of 'opportunity,' CNN loves to run interviews with minority business owners, executives, etc. who talk about 'trying to hire minorities and give them an opportunity.' Their left-leaning audience eats that up. If you made those white business owners they would be keenly aware of the fact that these individuals are blatantly admitting to biased - ILLEGAL - hiring practices.
Even the mainstream left wants something closer to equality of outcomes than equality of opportunity. Progressives generally seem to find the concept of equality of opportunity laughable.
I mostly agree with your argument here, but disagree with the conclusion. The focus on equality of outcome is the exact reason I am completely against affirmative-action style programs as a solution for inequality.
My problem with moderate Republicans isn't that they seem to be against equality of opportunity - I do think many believe we have the same goals. We just disagree on how to get there, and whether we are already there. I've had many discussions with Republicans who state that we already do have some form of equality of opportunity, some even stating that a person born poor has an equal likelihood to succeed as a person born rich in America.
Furthermore, the nations with the most equality of opportunity almost exactly align with my worldview. One of my favorite metrics is economic mobility, because I think it does a good job of demonstrating who has achieved the most equality of opportunity. The highest nations in economic mobility are Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland, with a bunch of other European nations coming in behind them. The US is 27th. This makes me feel all the more confident in my ideology as a social democrat, because I genuinely believe that social democracy is the best economic system at working towards equality of opportunity. From my perspective, it seems obvious that we would look towards those nations as a guide for our policy moving forward - and social democracy is often referred to as the "Nordic Model."
Those are just my two cents, anyway. Equality of opportunity might be the most important driver for me in economics and progressives seem to align more with actual policies that could get us closer to the goal than conservatives, even moderate ones.