I appreciated this article as I had never considered the idea of unfairness vs inequality. It could definitely be one of the reasons so many people the Democrats consider "theirs" prefer the other party.
Personally, I am an angry centrist, disgusted by both the right and left extremes, which are propped up and celebrated by our polarized, whorish media. Talking to my millennial children about politics is an utterly depressing experience. One has already emigrated and the other wishes he could. They vote, but realize/believe they have no power in our utterly rigged system.
Also (because I have another comment here), the essay is all about how to arrange the Democratic platform so as to win elections. Isn't it more proper to set a platform according to what one thinks is best for the country and then try to convince people to vote for it? That certainly seems more appropriate to a site called "Persuasion".
Agreed, but Mounk is a man of the left. His commitment to Enlightenment values are laudatory, but I presume part of his aim for this site is to make the left more reasonable and thus more electable. He's anti-woke because he sees those clowns are not only extreme, but poisonous to the Democrat's brand. On Morning Joe the other day, he stated in an aside that he believes the left's core idea that "deep injustices" exist in American society. Convincing cause and effect elucidations of these "injustices" have not been forthcoming by Mounk or any other leftist in the past half century. They can only be inferred from shallow readings of statistics and the stray anecdote. Nevertheless, it is the left's great faith and mission to rid us of these insidious phantasms. This article is just one more splash of the holy water. For a fuller and actually quite impressive elucidation of this "opportunity state" solution, see Ruy Teixeira's, The Optimistic Leftist. It's certainly better than their go-to socialist prescription.
I'm more willing to concede merit to the progressive side, but you got a "like" because I can't actually refute anything you wrote. And thanks for the reference to Teixeira -- I've read him, but not at The Optimistic Leftist.
Aristotle defines justice as fairness, understood as distribution (of goods, honors, etc.) that is proportional to merit. This is not egalitarianism in the sense of being equal distribution for all, which according to this understanding, would be unjust.
I submit that the author is correct in noting that Americans are NOT opposed to proportionality, as humans are acutely aware of differences in natural and acquired human talents as demonstrated in, for example, their love of competitive sports and the arts. Rather, Americans are opposed to incorrect assessment of true merit, as occurs, for example, with Ivy League legacy enrollment when a disproportionate share of admissions are given to alumni donor's children.
If this understanding is correct, then strict egalitarianism, understood as the elimination of meritocracy and identical outcomes for all, is contrary to human nature and the progressive mission to eliminate meritocracy is ill conceived and doomed to failure. True fairness will be achieved by true assessment of merit.
I'm not sure about this. The right talks the game of equality of opportunity but practices putting policies in place that further tilt opportunity to the already wealthy. If the left practices equality of opportunity by providing excellent schools, housing, and medical care, that would certainly be allowing for equality of opportunity. To pay for this, a fair tax system that ensures that the wealthy can't use tactics to avoid income tax would also help. Equal outcomes will never be a reality, but creating an environment of equal opportunity would allow most people to live a secure, comfortable lifestyle.
There are many other things that go into creating E of Opp. such as support for families to ensure that a parent, or parents, would only have to work one full time job to make enough to provide for their families. These are just some of the ways that the left could work towards making E of Opp. truly work.
All true, but none of those ideas are inherent to Left or Right. Nobody on the Right is going to tell you that he thinks laws should favor the rich. In practice, it may be that conservative politicians have been less inclined to raise taxes on the rich or to use tax money to pay for childcare, but I'm not sure that's true to any large extent. In any case, it's not like the outcome vs. opportunity divide, which is about ends more than means.
The hard part with the re-orientation from identity to class is that the overclass's status isn't at all threatened by identity issues. Far from it, identity is the fig leaf that class uses to disguise itself.
Think of the collapse of Occupy Wall Street and the corporate hostility it engendered given that its aim would have crippled the financial industries money making spigot, among other things.
Now think about the $24 Billion that have been pledged to BLM from corporations and foundations.......
Exactly. In my more conspiratorial-minded moments I can't help but noticed that wokery, the handmaiden of the economic status quo and darling of the corporate neolibs, really took off only in the wake of Occupy Wall Street and we never had a class-based populist movement again (with the possible exception of Bernie's 2016 campaign before the woke sabotaged it).
I think the authors are either playing semantic games or they just don't understand what American Progressives stand for. If they're simply pointing out that terms like "wealth re-distribution" and "socialism" rub many Americans the wrong way, they may be correct, but rebranding them as "economic fairness" will not fool anyone. The authors betray their disingenuousness when they name their models: Canada, Australia, and "the Nordics." They are among the same largely socialist democracies that American Progressives point to as their models! So if they think rebranding old wine in new bottles with their ludicrously unoriginal "economic fairness" term will provide an epiphany to unite our deep divide, then they are sadly mistaken. I doubt that it will even help them sell books.
I do not really get this article. In all Nordic countries as Sweden, the populist parties and especially right-wing populist ones are getting 10-20 % of votes despite social mobility and a large welfare state. And also, the Swedish welfare state is already more beneficial for the middle-class while the far-right voters are from the middle class and already have jobs, education and housing https://glibe.substack.com/p/the-swedish-welfare-state-more-as
There is something to this. However the extreme concentration of wealth in the US, and the plutocracy engendered thereby, precludes the sort of policy changes that the authors have in mind.
I appreciated this article as I had never considered the idea of unfairness vs inequality. It could definitely be one of the reasons so many people the Democrats consider "theirs" prefer the other party.
Personally, I am an angry centrist, disgusted by both the right and left extremes, which are propped up and celebrated by our polarized, whorish media. Talking to my millennial children about politics is an utterly depressing experience. One has already emigrated and the other wishes he could. They vote, but realize/believe they have no power in our utterly rigged system.
Also (because I have another comment here), the essay is all about how to arrange the Democratic platform so as to win elections. Isn't it more proper to set a platform according to what one thinks is best for the country and then try to convince people to vote for it? That certainly seems more appropriate to a site called "Persuasion".
Agreed, but Mounk is a man of the left. His commitment to Enlightenment values are laudatory, but I presume part of his aim for this site is to make the left more reasonable and thus more electable. He's anti-woke because he sees those clowns are not only extreme, but poisonous to the Democrat's brand. On Morning Joe the other day, he stated in an aside that he believes the left's core idea that "deep injustices" exist in American society. Convincing cause and effect elucidations of these "injustices" have not been forthcoming by Mounk or any other leftist in the past half century. They can only be inferred from shallow readings of statistics and the stray anecdote. Nevertheless, it is the left's great faith and mission to rid us of these insidious phantasms. This article is just one more splash of the holy water. For a fuller and actually quite impressive elucidation of this "opportunity state" solution, see Ruy Teixeira's, The Optimistic Leftist. It's certainly better than their go-to socialist prescription.
I'm more willing to concede merit to the progressive side, but you got a "like" because I can't actually refute anything you wrote. And thanks for the reference to Teixeira -- I've read him, but not at The Optimistic Leftist.
Aristotle defines justice as fairness, understood as distribution (of goods, honors, etc.) that is proportional to merit. This is not egalitarianism in the sense of being equal distribution for all, which according to this understanding, would be unjust.
I submit that the author is correct in noting that Americans are NOT opposed to proportionality, as humans are acutely aware of differences in natural and acquired human talents as demonstrated in, for example, their love of competitive sports and the arts. Rather, Americans are opposed to incorrect assessment of true merit, as occurs, for example, with Ivy League legacy enrollment when a disproportionate share of admissions are given to alumni donor's children.
If this understanding is correct, then strict egalitarianism, understood as the elimination of meritocracy and identical outcomes for all, is contrary to human nature and the progressive mission to eliminate meritocracy is ill conceived and doomed to failure. True fairness will be achieved by true assessment of merit.
I don't understand. If the Left moves from equality-of-outcome to equality-of-opportunity it'll just be the Right.
I'm not sure about this. The right talks the game of equality of opportunity but practices putting policies in place that further tilt opportunity to the already wealthy. If the left practices equality of opportunity by providing excellent schools, housing, and medical care, that would certainly be allowing for equality of opportunity. To pay for this, a fair tax system that ensures that the wealthy can't use tactics to avoid income tax would also help. Equal outcomes will never be a reality, but creating an environment of equal opportunity would allow most people to live a secure, comfortable lifestyle.
There are many other things that go into creating E of Opp. such as support for families to ensure that a parent, or parents, would only have to work one full time job to make enough to provide for their families. These are just some of the ways that the left could work towards making E of Opp. truly work.
All true, but none of those ideas are inherent to Left or Right. Nobody on the Right is going to tell you that he thinks laws should favor the rich. In practice, it may be that conservative politicians have been less inclined to raise taxes on the rich or to use tax money to pay for childcare, but I'm not sure that's true to any large extent. In any case, it's not like the outcome vs. opportunity divide, which is about ends more than means.
The hard part with the re-orientation from identity to class is that the overclass's status isn't at all threatened by identity issues. Far from it, identity is the fig leaf that class uses to disguise itself.
Think of the collapse of Occupy Wall Street and the corporate hostility it engendered given that its aim would have crippled the financial industries money making spigot, among other things.
Now think about the $24 Billion that have been pledged to BLM from corporations and foundations.......
Exactly. In my more conspiratorial-minded moments I can't help but noticed that wokery, the handmaiden of the economic status quo and darling of the corporate neolibs, really took off only in the wake of Occupy Wall Street and we never had a class-based populist movement again (with the possible exception of Bernie's 2016 campaign before the woke sabotaged it).
I think the authors are either playing semantic games or they just don't understand what American Progressives stand for. If they're simply pointing out that terms like "wealth re-distribution" and "socialism" rub many Americans the wrong way, they may be correct, but rebranding them as "economic fairness" will not fool anyone. The authors betray their disingenuousness when they name their models: Canada, Australia, and "the Nordics." They are among the same largely socialist democracies that American Progressives point to as their models! So if they think rebranding old wine in new bottles with their ludicrously unoriginal "economic fairness" term will provide an epiphany to unite our deep divide, then they are sadly mistaken. I doubt that it will even help them sell books.
I do not really get this article. In all Nordic countries as Sweden, the populist parties and especially right-wing populist ones are getting 10-20 % of votes despite social mobility and a large welfare state. And also, the Swedish welfare state is already more beneficial for the middle-class while the far-right voters are from the middle class and already have jobs, education and housing https://glibe.substack.com/p/the-swedish-welfare-state-more-as
There is something to this. However the extreme concentration of wealth in the US, and the plutocracy engendered thereby, precludes the sort of policy changes that the authors have in mind.