A Response to Ignorance

Sean Toohey recently blogged about equality and how it is ‘unfair’ that the rich will be taxed more than the poor. Toohey states in his article that “Recent developments in the United States involve taxing all to provide some people, who are less fortunate, access to important things like healthcare and education”, when he says ‘all’ we can only assume he means the wealthy few seeing as how most low- to middle-income families are unable to afford health insurance, unable to make mortgage payments, unable to spend on luxuries, and are unable to send their children to college.

Toohey declares that “We should all have an equal opportunity to achieve our own pursuits, but only through hard work and dedication, and not by exploiting the labors of others”; Toohey obviously believes that ‘anyone can succeed through hard work and dedication’, but clearly he has not conducted any kind of research seeing as how the facts say otherwise. Statistics show that ‘dumb rich kids’ have a higher chance of finishing college than the ‘smart poor kids’. Current surveys prove that social mobility (equal opportunity) is far lower than it once was thanks to the bush tax cuts increasing economic inequality. Untalented children with wealthy parents are able to receive better education than talented children with poor parents, so children of the poor stay poor while the children of the rich stay rich.

Toohey states “Obviously there are some who are created smarter than others, those with better athletic abilities, and even those with more of an artistic ability…However in a free society all people should have equal opportunity to pursue [their] own happiness and self actualization”. Toohey fails to realize that those more talented people, if they are poor, have little-to-no chance to compete according to recent statistics. That is not only an injustice, but also a huge waste of potential as we could have better people for the job.

Toohey speaks of ‘equality’, yet he fails to realize the severe lack of it. He fails to realize that due to the bush tax cuts (relieved tax on the rich); economic inequality has completely murdered equal opportunity. As of right now low- to middle-income families pay a larger share of their paychecks than the rich in taxes. If we make taxes more proportional by increasing it on the wealthy, it should reduce economic inequality; allowing better equal opportunity (‘equality’).