Why I just can't work myself up to giving a crap about 'equality'

Right, first things first, before everyone goes metal, I'll qualify what sort of 'equality' I'm talking about: economic equality. What? You're still irate, I guess you'll just have to read on then.

I was reading an article today about how several organisations had criticised a move by the government to redefine 'poverty' to include such things as drug addiction, family break down and debt. This was slammed because apparently is would lead to stigmatisation of the poor and it would "undermine the idea that relative poverty matters". News flash, relative poverty doesn't matter. Not in of itself.

I went on holiday not long ago and I went to a beautiful country with turquoise waters and I quickly realised that I was surrounded by rich yanks. Most people didn't have cars, they got around by yacht and the women all had diamonds on their fingers the size of the gravel on most peoples' drives. So if we want to use relative poverty, I was poor, but that would be ridiculous because I had a nice place to stay, drove around and could afford to eat. I had everything I needed and more, so I wasn't poor.
Likewise if I went to an isolated island where there was a very severe famine and I had plenty of gold and precious gems, while the rest of the people had none, the fact that I was 'rich' would be meaningless because there would be nothing to eat and everyone would be starving. The fact that by comparison I had more than everyone else, wouldn't make the smallest difference, because no one had enough to eat, even the 'rich'.

So in every way this fascination with how 'equal' people are is pointless. If equality is what you're after that is easy, get everyone to take all their belongings and chuck them into the sea. We'll all die pretty soon after but there will be perfect equality.

If you're thinking that this is an exercise in reductio ad absurdum, you're wrong. This actually happens in practise. Technically there are less poor people today than there were a could of years ago. How can this be, I hear you ask, we're in a recession. Well the technical definition of poverty is to be living on less than 60% of the average wage. Since the average wage has gone down, the number of people below 60% has decreased. Logically then a reduction in the number of people living in poverty is a good thing, and yet all that has happened in reality is that the standard of living has got worse for everyone. You know the way you measure poverty is a steaming pile of manure when life gets worse for everyone and yet that logs on your scale as a success.

That is the problem with 'equality' you can't make everyone better, you can try, but you won't succeed, but you can make everyone worse. I had a discussion the other day with a chap who was wondering whether banning private schools was worth it because children who go to them come out with better grades and since it costs money to go there that is unfair because not everyone can go. Well, private schools have exams just like everyone else, they just get the children to do better then them, close them down and sure you'll have a more equal society, because the children who would have gone to private school will go to state school and statistically they will do worse. So you'll have a more equal, but worse educated society. Hardly a winning scenario.

Surely it is better for everyone to do better and have a better standard of living regardless of whether that entails some people inevitably getting a slightly bigger share of it than others. The alternative is we all get a more equal share of something worse.

This leads me on to my next beef with this endless idolising of 'equality'. I don't want everyone to be equal. Oh I know very unfashionable thing to say but its is true. Why? Simple we're not the same. My sister earns far more money than I do. Probably a multiples of what I earn in fact. This does not bother me in the slightest. For a start she is older than me, which means she is more experienced and is thus higher in her job. But even with that aside, she spent her school years working... HARD for all of them. In contrast I faffed around for most of my school years constantly ignoring requests to do my homework and putting in just enough effort to cruise by. Of course, since then I've been introduced to the real world and I work hard. But if I could do as little as I have done for most of my life and then earn a sum of money that is 'equal' or even near equal to my sister then this world would be a seriously unfair place. It would be unjust it would be inequitable... not because we were treated differently, but because we weren't.

With this in mind why is it a big deal if people earn more than others. So they should, there will always be lazy people (like I was) in the world and so there should always be people with less money than those who work hard, or extremely hard. This way we have the freedom and liberty to pick our own lifestyles. We can work little and have lots of time, we can work hard and have some time or we can work very hard and have very little time, all with a corresponding amount of money that comes with it and at no point any equality of income.

Without doubt everyman (or woman) who puts their hand to the plough and works a solid week should be able to afford what they need to live and bring up a family, but that has absolutely nothing to do with how equal their pay is to everyone elses, what that is to do with is how much it costs to pay a mortgage, a gas bill, a food bill, a petrol bill etc. It has to do with the cost of living, it has nothing to do with what percentage of the top 10%'s wage they earn or anyone elses for that matter. This is why I've got no problem with the minimum wage. If someone works, they deserve to be paid for it and the deserve to be paid enough to have a life. What people don't deserve to do is look at how much someone else gets paid, who is in completely different circumstances as them, have made completely different life choices to them and have chosen completely different paths to them, and then decide that actually they should be earning the same amount.

Because when we do that we really, REALLY need to learn that sometimes equality just doesn't treat people equally.