This rationale serves as the same sort of catchall term as “equity,” widely beloved by the political Left. It conflates specific harms from deliberate policies — which deserve redress — with vague societal ills that indirectly and unverifiably impact the specific life paths of individuals. Thus, every inequality between blacks and whites, for example, becomes an instance of societal failure, to be cured with social engineering.
This is bad ethics, and it is bad social science. It’s bad ethics because the innocent should not be forced to pay people against whom they have not sinned, and because the connection between continued suffering and past discrimination must be measured and clarified rather than merely assumed. It’s bad social science because it ignores the role of individual decision-making in persistent intergenerational inequality, despite the massive intervention of state, local and federal government.
To that end, the federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States. The result has been exceedingly poor: While the income gap ratio between the poorest quintile of Americans and the wealthiest quintile of Americans post-transfer payments and taxes is just 4-to-1, the wealth gap between Black and white Americans has skyrocketed from approximately $50,000 pre-1960 to well over $130,000 in 2016. Why?听Because it turns out that public policy designed to alleviate inequality can also alleviate the consequences of bad decision-making.听If we assume that all inequality is inequity, then solving inequality should alleviate inequity — but if it turns out that a great deal of inequality is the result of bad decision-making, then inequality cannot be solved by simply helicoptering money to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder.
It is possible to blame all of this on systemic evil, but any fixes will have to come at the level of individuals making good and responsible decisions. Cutting checks won’t fix this. But such a policy recommendation makes for excellent demagoguery: It allows those who promote foolish and failed ideas to revel in their own supposed altruism, all while helping no one.
Ben Shapiro is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+.