[T]he difference between the two parties that lies at the heart of the matter: Whether we are a nation that still believes in equality of opportunity, or whether we are moving away from that, and towards an insistence on equality of outcome.
If you believe in the former, you follow the American Idea that justice is done when we level the playing field at the starting line, and rewards are proportionate to merit and effort.
If you believe in the latter kind of equality, you think most differences in wealth and rewards are matters of luck or exploitation, and that few really deserve what they have.
That’s the moral basis of class warfare – a false morality that confuses fairness with redistribution, and promotes class envy instead of social mobility.
Everytime Paul Ryan speaks, I get more and more disappointed he’s not running for President.
Everytime Paul Ryan speaks, I get more and more disappointed he’s not running for President.
Joey… do you really believe that in America, we have equality of opportunity, and/or that the Republican Party is the party more concerned with equality of opportunity?
I grew up in the suburbs and went to an “elite” all-girls Catholic school where I received a great education and was valued as a human being. I went because my parents paid for it. Then I went to NYU, which my parents paid for, and I did not work during any of the school years because my parents paid for my living expenses.
After graduation I got a job and supported myself (but I still had access to my parents’ credit card if money got tight at the end of the month). After a little over a year, I was laid off. My unemployment check was $1050, and my rent was $900. I did not become homeless because my parents helped subsidize me.
All 3 of the apartments I lived in, I was able to sign a lease because my parents signed as guarantors. Without guarantors, I would not have been able to live in any of the apartments.
Not everybody is as lucky as I am. At several points in my life, but especially when I lost my job, I would have been screwed if I did not have a family I could count on (I don’t just mean financially—I mean that I could have moved in with if I needed to). Some people become homeless even if they have jobs because they are unable to come up with the thousands of dollars of deposits required at the beginning.
I work in a homeless shelter. Some of the men there are in recovery or ex-criminals, but some of them just didn’t have the resources to get over hurdles that we do. (And btw, all of the men except for one are black or Latino.)
I don’t even really know how to address this because whoever says that we have anything close to “equality of opportunity” is just not in the same world I live in.
Fuck yea Natalie said what I would have said but better.
I will add a relevant Paul Krugman quote:
“We should try to create the society each of us would want if we didn’t know in advance who we’d be.”
