Equality, Equity, and Capitalism

In an ad during last year’s campaign, Kamala Harris asserted that “equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.” In other words, lots of class-warfare taxation to finance lots of means-tested redistribution.

Here’s an oft-used meme illustrating this argument that fairness is only possible with “equality of outcomes.”

I admit this is a clever image, but only in theory.

If you look at the societies that actually have followed Marx’s dictum of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” you find misery and destitution (nations such as Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela today, and countries such as Maoist China and the Soviet Union in the past).

Sort of like this modified meme.

But the above meme only tells part of the story.

Because here’s a look at what capitalism actually delivers.

In other words, there may be inequality in capitalism, but only in the sense that some people get richer faster than other people get richer.

If we mixed the final two memes, we would get something akin to the right side of this image, which shows equal misery under socialism and unequal prosperity under capitalism (hat tip to Winston Churchill).

The bottom line is that if we care about the well being of the less fortunate, the policy goal should be free markets and limited government.

Which was the entire point of my three-part series (here, here, and here) on poverty and inequality.

P.S. Here’s a story from Sweden about what happens when the ideology of equality produces bizarre choices.