No doubt I’m not qualified to enter this debate.  All of the people I quote are more experienced in this than I am, and I’d highly recommend you subscribe to their blogs rather than mine.  You’ll learn more, for starters, and they update more often than I do.  But the debate on equality of opportunity is an important one, and it is – like many debates – too important to be left solely to the professionals.  This is, I think, going to be in several parts (I do run into problems with brevity).

Recently, Andrew Leigh (ALP Member for Fraser) wrote a book called Disconnected, arguing among other things that the social fabric of society is fraying.  Christopher Joye critiqued the concern for income inequality:

The first observation is that a lot of people get awfully worked up about ‘income inequality’. I am not entirely sure what they are on about. That is, I don’t think there is anything wrong at all with a rise in income inequality if one assumes that: (a) we have equality of opportunity; (b) we are committed to combating extreme poverty; and (c) we are vigilant in protecting those members of the community who are fundamentally and irreversibly disadvantaged through, say, mental or physical disabilities. In fact, I think we should be focussed on dealing with (a), (b) and (c) rather than drumming up hysterics about inequality.

Matt Cowgill replied:

I view (equality of outcomes vs equality of opportunity) as a false dichotomy. I will assume for the purposes of this post that Christopher understands equality of opportunity to mean equal treatment before the law and by public institutions, in other words ‘procedural fairness’, plus perhaps support for public school education. If society ensures equality of opportunity, defined in those terms, should we be comfortable with the dimensions of the inevitable inequality of outcomes that results? I suggest not.

It wasn’t over yet, with Christopher Joye responding again:

Put plainly, Matt has misrepresented what I communicated in my essay, and twisted my remarks in order to construct a faux target with which to assault.

Debate on Twitter followed, insofar as bursts of 140 characters allows for debate.

@MattCowgill has launched a left-right war on me. i will take no prisoners. in a world of lonely wolves, tis safer to be feared than loved

I think Matt’s response missed the key issue, and I think Christopher’s argument fails before it begins.  In the spirit of (what I take to be) the jestful jousting between the two above Tweeters, I offer this as the tl;dr version of my argument:

Hint: In this comic, I'm Dilbert.

Hint: In this comic, I'm Dilbert.

In the absence of Dilbert comics settling debate, I’m going to address Christopher’s initial assumptions, and point out that a logical argument built on unsound assumptions is an unsound argument[1].  In this, I’m taking my lead from Paul Krugman, specifically, a pair of posts he’s written recently (Economics and Morality, and More Thoughts on Equality of Opportunity).  Do yourself a favour and subscribe to Professor Krugman’s blog.

Now, remember Christopher’s initial assumptions:

(a) we have equality of opportunity;
(b) we are committed to combating extreme poverty; and
(c) we are vigilant in protecting those members of the community who are fundamentally and irreversibly disadvantaged through, say, mental or physical disabilities

None of these are true.  Over the next few days, I shall aim to make the case that these assumptions – particularly the first – do not hold.  If they don’t, the argument that rising income inequality is not a problem seems to be damaged.

Equality of opportunity

I’m taking equality of opportunity literally here.  Christopher claims that Matt set up a straw man.  It’s not my intention to do that, so I’m going to take equality of opportunity to mean that everyone gets the same chances, irrespective of characteristics outside of their control.  “Outside of their control”, in this context, includes family income, parents’ education and job status, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability, and so on.

Digging out data on this shouldn’t be too hard.  I’m going to cover the admissions to University by socio-economic status (SES).  I am confident enough to say at this point that while students with equivalent ENTER scores enter universities at more or less the same rate irrespective of SES, ENTER scores correlate to SES.  In short, equality of opportunity may exist once you’re able to get in to a university, but the pathway to get an offer depends on how wealthy your family is.  I suspect – and have found evidence in favour – that high SES students perform better than low SES students, although we’ll see what more digging turns up.

I’m also going to cover the three-generations-unemployed.  It does strike me as a little odd that you could consider that equality of opportunity exists here.

Combating extreme poverty

I’m taking “extreme poverty” as the inability to meaningfully participate in society in Australia.  I’m going to cover Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander poverty, and I’m going to argue that there’s no real commitment to combating this.  I’m also going to consider Australia’s homeless population, and the unemployed.  These three groups contain people who are living in extreme poverty, and I’m going to argue that we’re not really committed to fixing this.

Protecting the disadvantaged

I’m going to consider the groups of people Christopher includes as disadvantaged, and I’m going to talk about outcomes for those who face mental health problems, and those who are injured.  I feel reasonably confident that I’ll be able to show that selected key disadvantaged groups are more likely to be living in relative poverty than Australians outside of these groups.

What this means

If none of the above holds, then – according to Christopher Joye’s argument – income inequality matters.  I’d submit it matters anyway[2],but leaving this argument aside, income equality has to be strengthened in the absence of equality of opportunity.  And income equality is a part of both combating extreme poverty and protecting the disadvantaged.

FOOTNOTES
1. I’m happy to be shown that I’m wrong.  One of my favourite JM Keynes quotes is, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”  There are worse ways to live.↑
2. I am aware that critiques have been made.  The authors have responded to them, but the analysis I found the most compelling was that done within states of the US – a point the authors make as well.↑