Economic Equality is Dumb

Hector Guthrie
3 min readAug 17, 2024

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Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash

People talk about economic equality like it is something to be desired. It is not. I want to be equally rich in Monaco, but I don’t want to be equally poor in Venezuela. So, it’s not about being economically equal to those around me and having the same conditions, because those conditions can be dismal.

Neither is it something we can feasibly achieve by implementing social justice, or control measures to make starting conditions more equal. The family unit is the closest sample of people growing up in near exact conditions. Their education, values, economic starting point, etc. will be near identical from one sibling to the next; and yet we do not find economic equality among siblings.

In a world where people make choices for themselves, disparity does not equal wrongdoing. It could be a result of wrongdoing, but just as easily a result of different choices. Instead, it’s about having economic mobility to obtain enough wealth to provide for one’s life and pursue happiness (loosely). So which economic system makes it easiest for the individual to do that?

First, simply giving people money, in all its forms (wealth redistribution, reparations, socialism, etc.) won’t work. History has shown this to be true. But there is other evidence showing that simply giving poor people money does not help. Many lottery winners (representing people getting money handed to them) will file for bankruptcy within several years, meaning they will be in whatever economic bracket they were before. Well over 50%, and up to 80%, of professional athletes (representing people getting money handed to them — because many athletes go from the bottom to the top income brackets almost overnight) will go broke a few years after retirement. Why?

Because if you don’t practice good money habits when you have practically none, it’s statistically unlikely that you’ll understand it after stacks of cash are thrown into your lap — meaning even if we perfectly and fairly redistributed all the wealth so that everyone was equal, in a few short years, things would resort to how they were. It won’t solve the spending problem most people have. Wealth is more of a mindset than the number of dollar bills.

On the flip side, 79% of millionaires became so without inheritance. Only 16% received inheritance above $100,000 and only 3% received any inheritance over $1M. So, the doors to wealth are still open and don’t depend on money falling into your hands.

In fact, over half of Americans (56%) will be in the top 10% wealth bracket at some point in their life, and 73% will be in the top 20% wealth bracket at some point. That means there is good possibility of economic mobility.

Free markets keep mobility open and keep us in the right direction as abject poverty is at an all-time low from ~90%, down to ~10%.

Economic equality is not the goal because it is not an indicator of fairness, equity, or anything else; it is not feasible, proven by its historical failures (leading to tragic disasters); and even if we somehow get everyone economically equal, it will disappear faster than cotton candy once people are free to spend how the desire. Give people liberty, let them own their success as well as their failures, make it easy to rebound from falling by removing artificial roadblocks, and people will have economic mobility to pursue their happiness

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Hector Guthrie

I am a thinker and a writer. As a religious minority, a gender minority, a racial minority, and a political minority, I think I have something to say.