It’s a provocative question, especially in egalitarian America. I also have a problem with “deserve,” as I do with almost all of the article, but it’s a fairly cogent argument for “social justice.”
As you have greater inequality, you have a greater and greater risk of distorting democracy. If only a small group of people hold more and more resources and money, they're really able to put a lot of pressure on the system to play out their agenda alone. So widening inequality really is detrimental to the principles of democracy. (STL Today)Progressives forged a social contract over 100 years ago
The wealthy were feeling increasingly threatened by the grimy hordes of unschooled hayseeds and boisterous immigrants crowding east coast cities to work the factories. The kids needed education and the adults needed economic security. There really was generalized fear of peasant revolts or worse, a growing permanent underclass given over to a life of crime. Gangs of uneducated poor marauding rich neighborhoods like packs of feral beasts was a specter that haunted the nation into governmental noblesse oblige.
This has turned into a crass form of “fire insurance.” Keep the money flowing, and they won’t burn the place down. While I disagree with the class warfare rhetoric, we are facing conditions ripe for community troublemakers to mobilize millions demanding their “fair share.” We’ve built an entitlement culture and you can’t blame the entitled. Government has encouraged them.
People don’t need handouts and grand social programs. We need schools that teach useful skills, economic opportunity, and a strong dollar that holds its value so that life savings are still worth something when we get to our old age. Those three things will not guarantee equal outcomes (nothing will), but they will give everyone an equal shot in this most prosperous, egalitarian, and upwardly mobile country in the history of the world.
