Equality for All! (Some more than others)

In Paul Krugman's piece "Confronting Inequality", he addresses various concepts and ideas about social inequality. He uses statistics and charts, as well as historical evidence to back his claims, which are largely that conservative economics, have, if nothing else, increased the incidence of social/economic inequality in the U.S. He also made the point, that if the U.S is truly supposed to be a land of equal opportunity, with a high degree of social inequality, then economic safety nets, and "better" economic equality are a must. 

I agree for the most part with Krugman's assessments. In fact, I happen to have written a similar piece that goes farther into detail on a point he made about unions. What I discovered while writing that piece was that conservative policies tend to be deceptive, painting themselves as natural, helpful policies, while having nefarious implications that they neglect to mention. My focus was that "Right-to-work" laws, which claim to protect workers from the "dangers" of unions, actually indirectly hurt unions and open avenues for abuse by employers. 

One of Krugman's points really struck home for me: social equality is rooted in economic equality. Although many would like to believe otherwise, the world we live in does convey an unfair advantage to those born into wealth, and "equal opportunity" doesn't hold up very well in a society where education is all but required, but prohibitively expensive for most. There was a time when America was the world leader in social equality, yet Krugman points out in his writing that we have lapsed several places behind. Is it any surprise that the countries with the most progressive economic policies? Common sense tells us no. Yet America rests on its laurels, sits on its high-horse, and preaches about the sanctity of their freedom to all who will listen. Freedom is all well and good, but without the financial means to support yourself, and rise in social status and better careers, this amount to nothing more than the freedom to be poor.To make matter worse, nepotism, and the almost cult-like following of "networking" have made finding and getting good jobs less about your technical skills, and more about social skills, which, although it has it's benefits I'll admit, monopolizes the best positions to those who rub shoulders with the successful and wealthy, i.e the successful and wealthy.

To conclude, Krugman, unsurprisingly as a Nobel-prize winning economist, makes many good points about inequality in the U.S, that I tend to agree with. Lessening economic inequality is key to lessening social inequality, which history shows us, tends to be a good thing.