- #36
WheelsRCool
There must be a typo here somewhere.
Yes, I meant, "So one should NOT raise them too high."
Equality of opportunity does not exist - there is too much inequity. The US economy is based on inequity and has been from the beginning - e.g. indentured servitude, slavery and appropriation of lands which the native peoples inhabited. There are interesting history books which detail many developments, e.g. turnpikes, toll roads, and railroads, in which certain lawyers and businessmen got preferential and exclusive benefits for state and federal governments that were certainly not available to the average citizen.
In short, 'equal opportunity' is the carrot at the end of the stick that many will never experience.
Yes, pure equality of opportunity can't exist unless we have a perfect world, but we can strive for it. However, trying to make things more equal by focusing on equality of outcome only makes things even more un-equal.
America has had a lot of faults throughout its history, I agree, from the treatment of the Native Americans, slavery, and so forth. But overall, the country still has a lot of equality of opportunity, which is why it generates so much wealth.
There will always be corruption, because of Big Business, politicians, unions, etc...the most one can do is to make the economy where these things are undermined as much as possible, for example the Wall Street revolution in the 1980s that ended the monopoly of power that the priviledged elite had or Margaret Thatcher's helping kill the power the coal unions had over the United Kingdom. Wall Street still has a "good 'ole boys" way to it and corruption, but a good deal less so than what it used to. A lot of the wealthy hedge-fund managers, for example, come from middle-class backgrounds and worked their way up.