What equals what?
by Duncan O'Leary
My hopes for a bit more progressive action in the blogosphere may have been answered. Liberal Conspiracy, launched this week, looks like a promising place for some good debate on the liberal left. Chris Dillow writes an early post arguing against equality of opportunity as a key policy goal, in favour of more redistribution instead. His argument is basically that:
- Equality of opportunity is hard to achieve
- Redistribution is easier and more effective at bringing about equality
- Following Rawls, this is also a moral goal
- Let’s do more of that instead
First, it’s more complicated than that. Of course wealth matters – if you can send your child to a private school, or buy a house in a different catchment area with better schools then your children may well have more opportunities than others’ do. But wealth is also – partly – a function of capability. And the danger is that the life chances of the children of the five million people without functional literacy are reduced not just because their parents earn less than others, but because they can’t teach them to read. So inequality is passed on, and not just because of money. Education is about greater equality for future generations as well as this one.
Second, if your goal is simply to reduce economic inequality, it might be cheaper simply to re-distribute money than to try to educate people to higher levels (although I doubt it). But there is also a question of dignity here. People in work are happier. So education is partly about economic equality, but also about wider social goals like well-being. In fairness, maybe Chris makes this point when he says, ‘This is not to say we shouldn’t worry about education. We should, but for reasons other than equality.’
Third, there is a more pragmatic point about the politics of re-distribution. Which is about reciprocity. People are more likely to support redistribution if they think others are making a contribution. This was part of the thinking behind tax credits – that's why they are positioned as a top up to earnings rather than ad traditional benefits. So maybe part of building the political case for redistribution also depends on building people’s capabilities and helping them into work.
None of this is to argue against redistribution – rather it is to suggest that equality of outcome and equality of opportunity are not so easy to separate after all.
Michael Janda
Speaking from personal experience as coming from a working/welfare class background, I for one wouldn't have been happy to settle for a second rate education to year 10, and then sit unemployed/under-employed on my arse while receiving a redistribution of income but, one can safely assume, not respect from the wealthier sections of society. For people to have dignity, confidence and active participation in society they need equality of opportunity in education.
Simon Parker
Dillow's argument works as provocation, but it's a bit silly otherwise. Basically, it amounts to saying that we'll never get to equality, so we should just accept that the poor are forever wretched and give them more money.
There's something very old fashioned about this view - it speaks to the idea of a settled working class rising and falling together, their coal stained little faces gratefully accepting organised state charity.
I agree that equality of opportunity is so radical that a liberal society cannot achieve it in any practical sense. But that doesn't mean we have to entrench dependence and glue people into social positions they may well want to resist.
Money helps, but that's no reason to ignore aspiration and helping people improve their own lives. Just because we can't heal society's senseless wounds, doesn't mean that we shouldn't try our best to soothe them.
Some aspects of inequality in our society are so extreme that I just can't believe there's nothing we can do to narrow them. My favourite - and the one I'd take as my first headline indicator if I were PM - is Oxbridge entrance. Attending these universities confers a huge advantage, but over 40% of students are from private schools. This is the rich committing social engineering on a vast scale and the state has a right to fight back.
Two options - first, government should just give the ancient universities a recruitment quota for state school kids, or at least weight funding so a state school pupil is worth a lot more to the institutions. I don't care about the academic implications, but the social ones.
If you don't like that, turn them into postgraduate research institutes and immediately widen the circle of privilege to include the Russell group, which at least creates a broader, more open and less traditional pool of elite institutions.