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HappySqurriel on 02 August 2011
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Kasz216 said:
HappySqurriel said:
Kasz216 said:
The correct way to artificially close the wealth gap if moral issuses aside would be to spend government money to to find qualified candidates and hire private contractors to create minority owned buisnesses and give them a roadmap for success.

I say moral issues aside, because the only real difference between Poor black people and poor white people is their skin color. Essentially penalizing poor white people because of rich white people. Which is problematic when you consider rich white people don't care about poor white people.

In general it depends on whether you care more about evening up past discrimination or keeping treatment of the poor fair.


I would personally argue that the wealth gap, and the inability for certain minority groups to qualify for mortgages in high numbers, is actually caused by a problem that is already well known and well understood; and working models for how to fix it are already in place.

The American public education system is failing to provide far too many students with the basic literacy, numeracy and financial-literacy skills these children will need as adults to have decent employment opportunities and to manage their lives effectively. While this is a problem that impacts all economic and ethnic groups within the country, this disproportionately impacts poor minority communities. Without these basic skills many of these people are doomed to have low income and low credit scores which prevent them from having access to credit.

It's certaintly an issue, however weath is actually a bigger issue... as a means... not an end.

People of two different races, of equal educational attainment and achivement often will have drastic outcome differences because of prexisting wealth.

For example, i'm living with my girlfriend getting her through graduate school.  I was unemployed for a long time, and could afford to be, because my parents were comfortably middle class. The only reason I have a job now is because I became friends with a guy, who's friend needed to hire someone he could trust.  (They were both middle eastern, but it shows the value of knowing people with sustained wealth.)

This is the reason why the wealth and income gaps grow despite the fact that we go out of our way to even it.

It's not enough to have wealth, but also sometimes to know somebody who can float you a few bucks.


Personally, I'm not too worried about equality of outcomes because when you ensure that there is equality of opportunity the equality of outcomes will resolve itself (over time) ...

Public education is justified because all individuals should have access to a quality education in order to provide opportunities for success for every child; in essence to create a society where every child can become a doctor, lawyer or president regardless of race, class or gender. When society exists that falls in line with this ideal, multiple generations of successful individuals will ensure that wealth will be proportionately distributed across all ethnic groups.

The fact that there is a massive wealth gap is actually the result of their being inequality of opportunity (both historically and in modern times) and a large portion of the modern opportunity-gap is a broken education system.