Does income inequality decrease opportunity? Debate

[video=youtube;3GHKp6tPsEY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GHKp6tPsEY[/video]
(The poll is for the debate, this is not a poll thread)

If some poor kid has to go to a run down school full of gangs and at home his parents are always arguing about bills and financial issues greatly increasing stress combined with a lack of proper nutrition, does this decrease the child's opportunity to succeed in life? The obvious answer is yes, but im curious to see how Right Wingers can twist and turn basic logic and pretend that it doesnt. Yes, many people in very bad circumstances have pulled them selves out of the gutter, but these are clearly exceptions. Lets take the issue of schools and look at it by itself scientifically, is your child more likely to succeed if he goes to a good expensive private school than if he went to a rundown cheap public school full with drugs and gang violence? Every single rational person here would agree going to a better school will surely increase your child's opportunity, which clearly means kids who go to bad schools have less opportunity than rich kids who go to good schools. Now, lets look at nutrition. Is your kid more likely to do good in school eating only Ramen everyday because its cheap? Or is he more likely to do better when he has a proper breakfast and can actually afford school lunch? Yes school lunch is free for poor kids right now, but Right Wingers want to take that away, meaning poor kids wont even be able to (*)(*)(*)(*)ing eat at school greatly decreasing their chance of success and opportunities exponentially.

If none of these things help increase your child's chance of success and their opportunity in life, than why send your kids to the best schools you can and give them the best food and healthcare you can? If none of these things matter, than surely you wouldnt mind everyone going to public schools, right? If sending your kid to a public school because you cant afford a private one does not decrease your child's opportunity in life, than SURELY there will be no problem with sending everyone to public schools since it makes no difference anyway, with free will and all right? I mean we do have free will dont we? Why would it matter if your kid goes to a public school, he has the free will to avoid the bad influences in those schools anyway so everything will be just fine!

The thing is, you know you dont believe this but you play semantics pretending that everyone in America has absolute equal opportunity to succeed whether they are rich or poor, when you know thats not true its just pure blatant propaganda to keep the status quo.

 

This has nothing to do with income inequality and everything to do with the failing public school system. If the government took the money spent on kids forced to go to public schools and gave them a voucher that allowed them to go to the school of their choice, they could get a good private school education and in most cases have money left over. That would give the poor kids the same opportunity for success the more affluent kids have. You want to give poor kids a better chance at success, get the government out of the way.

 

I don't see how one can even argue. Money buys opportunity. In situations with a finite number of spots money can play a role. The only thing one can really argue about is the degree to which it effects opportunity. Equal opportunity is a myth though. Children of wealthy families have a huge leg up. This is why I support the idea that everybody should make as much as they want in their personal lives, but leave nothing to their children. I would like to see society become more meritocratic rather than socialistic. In pure communism everybody might have equal opportunity, but in the end everybody loses.

 

I don't see how anyone can seriously claim that income inequality decreases opportunity. Obviously, lacking money reduces opportunity, and having money opens up many opportunities, but how can income inequality affect that at all? Are my opportunities somehow, magically, reduced because someone else has a higher income? Let's think through an utterly ridiculous scenario this flawed and odd "logic" produce. I am poor, and everyone else is poor. Thus income inequality is zero and therefore I have more opportunities than if there was also some richer people around, because they, by their mere existance, reduce my chances. No, this is, quite frankly, just retard-thinking going on here. It's the absolute level of income/wealth which is relevant, not the inequality!

 

Well since they dont have these vouchers you speak of, do you admit at the current moment poor kids do have less chance of success?

Even if they did have these vouchers, are you saying the vouchers will pay entirely for poor kids to go to private schools? If not, than they wont be able to afford it even with a discount.

 

yep, anyone who "thinks" that having lots of money makes no diff is not just deluded, they are moronic

 

They have decreased opportunity RELATIVE to the extremely rich, not in general. Point being, poor people have less opportunity than rich people, that is undeniable even you admitted it.

 

If it was based on peoples "merits" than the rich would still have a huge leg up, they will have better "merits" because they went to better schools with proper nutrition so on and so fourth. The merits of the rich and powerful will outweigh that of the poor. You say they wont leave anything to their children which will certainly mitigate much of these issues I brought up, but you do realize taking 100% of peoples inheritance is EXTREMELY Communistic, right? Its a good idea dont get me wrong, just dont act like that isnt Communistic in nature, it is. Even if you took their inheritance, wealthy kids will still have far more connections than poor kids, still giving them a huge advantage.

The reason im against a meritocracy is because I dont believe in free will whatsoever and a meritocracy seems to only be a good idea if you believe in free will, because if you dont than its hard to give some special privileges over somebody else simply because they are more "intelligent" or whatever criteria it is you measure them by for these "merits". Everyone is good at different things, so to say "This person is good at Math, therefore he has more merit than this philosopher over here" just doesnt seem right to me. People are products of their environment, if somebody has a lot of merit (however the hell you would even measure it is beyond me) its only because they were raised in the right conditions, it just wouldnt be right to give them special privileges just because they were raised "better" than most others.

 

Let me rephrase it,

"Does income inequality decrease opportunity for the poor relative to the rich?"

That is a more specific question that I was getting at, im sure you know this but you are good at semantics

 

"Vouchers can be used for Muslim Schools? OOPS!"

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/06/1106793/--Vouchers-can-be-used-for-Muslim-Schools-OOPS

 

Still a stupid idea. It's the lack of money in an absolute sense which decreases opportunity, not that others might have more wealth. inequality is totally irrelevant. Of course lack of money means less opportunity, but there wouldn't be more opportunity if everyone was equally as poor nor would there be less if rich people existed.

 

Of course vouchers can be used for Muslim schools. How could it be otherwise in a free society?

 

Do you want to close the opportunity gap by bringing the rich down a peg or lifting the poor up a peg?

 

republican politicians are not that smart I guess

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Unequivocally, yes, it does. Social scientists have proven the causal relationship between income inequality and social mobility dozens, if not hundreds, of times. It can't even be debated.

 

I doubt you'll get much disagreement from anyone but those invested in the current system, that the public school system in the U.S. is bad. Anyone trapped in it certainly has a disadvantage compared to those that aren't. Still, this isn't an income inequality problem. Its a government restriction of freedom problem.

As for the cost, the schools in my area get about 8000 dollars per kid per year. That is more than the best private schools in the area, but even if you had to suffer a median level private school, the quality is head and shoulders over the public alternative.

 

Of course income inequality must affect opportunity to the extent it only and merely, takes money to make more money under any form of capitalism.

 

You guys are arguing that poverty decreases it, which is a different topic.

Income equality has nothing to do with opportunity whatsoever.

If a childs parents are worth 10 billion and another childs parents are worth 20 million that is a big income gap so are you saying that the kid worth 20 million will receive a worse education or what have you?

 

They go back and forth on this. Sometimes, they pretend that they believe in equal opportunity. Other times (and I think this is when they're being more honest), they just admit that they like things unequal. They're into hierarchies. They're pyramid-worshippers. They want a powerful few at the top and powerless masses beneath them. For some of them, I think this is a strategic choice, believing that aristocrats do everything worthwhile and so aristocrats should be as fully empowered as possible. For most of them, though, I think they just get off on the misery of everyone that isn't an aristocrat -- they're taking out their issues, whether it be a sense of personal inadequacy or sexual repression, on 99% of the people at once, which is ideal for that sort of person.

 

I'm with Mr. Swedish Guy here. Why is the question conflating the idea of opportunity with the idea of 'relative wealth'? Why is anyone trying to measure their wealth as relative to the wealth of someone else?

If you have the basics you are not poor (and I have been poor - without the basics - so I understand that). Having opportunity suggests the opportunity to do better . . . not to do it competitively. Suggesting 'poor in relation' reflects a place of envy and I can't understand why anyone would encourage looking through that prism.

 

The following is a 5 minute video about income mobility. Its worth watching, as it goes a little beyond the basic statistics and talks about individual households and the children of the poor and of the wealthy.

[video=youtube;UbueX92CKPk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbueX92CKPk[/video]

http://www.learnliberty.org/videos/is-there-income-mobility-in-america/

 

Politicians, republican, democrat or other, are not interested in promoting a free society. They're too busy looking out for their own self interests.

 

agree, maybe if Congress only paid a normal wage, more people that wanted to be there would be there

 

I dont even think thats what Mr. Swedish guy is saying but sure. The point is they have MORE opportunity, wouldnt you want everybody to have the same opportunities? Why is that such a bad thing? The Right Wing is supposed to me the "champions" of this idea, but they run from it.

 

Yeah I agree entirely, I think it has less to do with stupidity or ignorance and more do to with greed and hatred. Although, it could be argued stupidity and ignorance is a precursor to greed and hatred