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As a liberal, I am concerned about equal opportunity. I believe we ought to do what we can to give everyone a shot at a decent life. Now, some opportunities are not distributed equally. People born in poor families are more likely to have poor nutrition, poor health, poorer schools, to live in dirtier neighborhoods, and even more dangerous neighborhoods. They arrive in the job market with what they are able to accomplish within those limitations. Some people manage to work their way out of the cycle of poverty, some do not. Now, I submit to you that these people face hurdles that people born in more fortunate situations do not, and do not get the same opportunities as a result. Fewer people with the same talents and effort succeed in these circumstances, and it is not their fault. No one has control over where they are born.

So what I propose is that we take some measures to equalize opportunity at least to some degree. We can't make the blind see, but we can provide books in braille. And the smart ones and studious ones can take it from there.

My arguments for doing this are two. First, we should not penalize people for things that are not their fault. Second, we deprive society of the gifts and talents of people working with such disadvantages. Just in economic terms, such investments make sense.

On the matter of liberty, I'd like to take the big picture. People who are stuck in situations where they are deprived of opportunities to better their lives are less free than those not so stuck. So, yes, you do give up the freedom to spend some of the money you have earned. That does reduce your liberty somewhat. But it increases the liberty of others, and makes society as a whole freer. In terms of marginal utility, a dollar represents less welfare for someone who has lots of dollars, than for someone who has few dollars. In am not talking about equalizing incomes. I don't believe in that. I do believe some jobs are harder, some make more social contributions, and that wage differentials do attract talented people to the places where they are needed. And we are all better off having more competent people as doctors than less competent people as doctors.

Just letting things happen is not a formula for success.

I suggest to you that "just letting things happen"was for the most part precisely the formula for success until the depression/WWII generation tossed it all away for free handouts.

Without a doubt America prior to that generation had lots of room for improvement. Likewise, many improvements have occurred despite their gi'me, gi'me, gi'me demands that were forced upon the vitality of the nation. But the resulting costs, hopelessness, and mass dependencies that came out of their political actions have now been institutionalized into a new nationwide underclass.

The regressive proposals of the so-called "progressives" and the anti-social policies of the misnamed "liberals" have only compounded the problems. Our current caretaker "conservative" government, only able to hold on through the last election due to a war and a threat of terrorism, has offered nothing new, except more of the same, as it tries to balance the concerns of opposing interests.

In a prior reply on this thread you mentioned "trasnportation" and "eminent domain." The full costs of which you did not go into. Besides the small taxing and actual property thefts that have occurred in their name, their is the much larger costs of urban sprawl, with its subsequent demands for wider roads, land use planning, and further theft of property use rights (not to include the massive additional costs to meet environmental concerns). Try reversing this situation, with its subsequent handouts, and one will quickly see just how powerful the construction industry and its unions have become.

In another reply, you speak of "equal opportunity." You say "we should not penalize people for things that are not their fault.." But that is exactly what you do when you imply that freedom penalizes them. Freedom penalizes nobody. But implying that it does, allows for an easy way to ignore the fact that a lack of freedom is exactly what is actually penalizing them. Envisioning people as mere wage slaves, pigeon holes them as being either lazy incapable of taking care of themselves. Instead of offering them freedom (spontinaety in business), the call goes out for more spending of other people's money to care for them while training them to be 8 hour a day, 40 hour a week wage slaves. It may make the promoters of such expenditures feel superior as they look down upon these poor folks, but it does not take care of their real needs.