Don't Give Up on Equality of Opportunity

I recently had a debate with my Bloomberg View colleague Megan McArdle on the question of which kinds of inequality we should care about. We’re far from the only people thinking about this important issue. Last year, Dylan Matthews of Vox made a long and well-argued case that we shouldn’t worry about equality of opportunity. Since this concept is a hallowed American ideal, promoted by everyone from President Barack Obama to House Speaker Paul Ryan, Matthews’ thesis is both bold and contrarian. Is it really time to throw out one of our guiding principles?

Matthews mainly highlights one big problem with the concept of “opportunity” -- it’s hard to define. Do natural talents count as opportunities? No matter what I did in life, no matter how hard I worked, I could never have been as good a basketball player as LeBron James. But I was born into a two-parent middle-class family, while James was born to a low-income single teenage mother. I’m also white. If I had James’ natural physical and mental talent for basketball, I’m sure it would have been much easier for me to reach his level of stardom than it was for him. So did I have more opportunity, or less?