The children of programmers are left with a highly marketable skill that earns them hundreds of thousands of dollars and considerable social prestige later in life. Each set of parents decides to teach their children their trade. Imagine two families, one headed by two classical musicians, one headed by two computer programmers. Equality of opportunity would make every parenting choice a matter of public policy, to be regulated accordinglyīut the problem goes much deeper than monetary inequality. No violin lessons or chess lessons or tennis lessons or theater classes. For one thing, any actions taken by affluent families meant to help their kids get ahead are prima facie illegitimate. Think for a second about what that means. Taking them seriously underscores what should be obvious: Pure equality of opportunity is deeply illiberal, and no one who understands its true implications would ever endorse it.Įquality of opportunity promises not just sufficient opportunities to all families, but equivalent ones. There is a proven mechanism - inheritance taxes - that the government could use to cut her wealth down to the level of her peers, even if doing so would be politically impossible, and probably undesirable.īut some of the most important inequalities of opportunity cannot be addressed by governments in any reasonable way. And there's also no possible universe in which enough wealth redistribution takes place that future Megan Ellisons start their careers with the same monetary resources as every other 25-year-old.Īt least in Ellison's case we know how equalizing opportunity would work. There is no possible universe in which every child in America is going to get $2 billion to pursue her dreams. On her 25th birthday, Megan Ellison - daughter of Larry Ellison, the fifth richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of $50 billion - inherited a massive sum, rumored at as much as $2 billion, and used it to finance films and boost her career as a producer. Oracle heir and movie producer Megan Ellison. Implementing equality of opportunity would be a totalitarian nightmare It should try to achieve a reasonable and rising standard of living for all. A decent society shouldn't try to build a better aristocracy. We should want no underclass, a world in which there might be some inequality but deep poverty is a thing of the past. It assumes there will always be an underclass it just wants to reserve membership for those who truly deserve it. It assumes that life is a zero-sum competition for wealth and status, that the most important thing is ensuring that only the smartest and hardest-working among us end up the victors. Moreover, equality of opportunity is simply a bad goal. Pursuing true equality of opportunity would require turning America into a dystopian, totalitarian nightmare - and even then, it would still prove impossible. The only problem? No one really wants equality of opportunity, nor anything close to it. Huge amounts of time, money, and intellectual effort are devoted to this idea, that a just world is one in which opportunity is equal, even if outcomes aren't. Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez, two of the best microeconomists of their generation, have joined forces to start the Equality of Opportunity Project, which is meant to produce hard numbers about opportunity across time and across regions. Respected think tanks like the Brookings Institution establish entire projects devoted to figuring out how to advance equality of opportunity. Promises to achieve equality of opportunity, like promises to create jobs or protect America abroad, are the white noise of campaign season, drawing neither notice nor challenge. It is not a subject of political debate, but the precondition of political debate. "The opportunity gap is the defining issue of our time."Įveryone wants equality of opportunity. "President Roosevelt … said there's no mystery about what it takes to build a strong and prosperous America: 'equality of opportunity. "Instead of focusing on equality of outcomes, we should be focusing on equality of opportunity." "While we don’t promise equal outcomes, we have strived to deliver equal opportunity."
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