Brian replies: I think I have dealt with this in earlier replies and in the main post. Obviously equality of outcomes doesn’t mean that everyone gets to have the same top jobs or the same incomes as everyone else. You invite me to “bear in mind that individuals differ not only in intelligence, however one defines and measures it, but in officer-like qualities which certainly are at least partly inculcated by background and experience”, etc., but that’s exactly the point. Untrammelled equality of opportunity, unmodified by state intervention to reduce its most extreme and negative consequences, will result in gross inequalities of outcome (in every sense – quality of life, income, wealth, culture in the broadest sense, health, and so on and so forth) so extreme as eventually to tear society apart, because of the very inequalities of talent, intelligence, energy, luck, unscrupulousness, cunning, greed, ambition, generosity, kindness, altruism, etc. that are inherent in the human species and which you kindly remind me about. Re-read the long extract from Michael Young’s article in my original post (or, better still, the full article) — he puts it more clearly and persuasively than I can do.

I’m afraid that I have said as much about this as I can usefully say, and must now devote myself to trying to pack for a brief excursion to Spain over Christmas during which this column will be temporarily closed….

Brian replies: Forgive me, but an adequate reply to your question would need a book, not a comment. Action to promote equality (and to remove unnecessary inequality) is needed all the time in every sphere of government activity: there’s no snake oil or magic bullet. But a good symbolic start would be to increase the marginal rate of income tax on all incomes over, say, £100,000 a year, scrap many of the current allowances that benefit mainly top earners, and greatly increase the levels below which no income tax is payable at all. (Actually there are cogent if counter-intuitive arguments for a flat rate tax with no allowances at all but with a starting-point set high enough to exclude many more from any tax obligation and the rate set at a level that would actually be sharply progressive, i.e. redistributive and pro-equality, in its effects: see e.g. http://tinyurl.com/cy55m.) We might also consider legislation to impose a maximum percentage gap between the highest and lowest salaries (including benefits in kind) paid to employees, including managers at all levels, by companies above a certain size. But this is about more than simply incomes (or even incomes and wealth): it’s about the huge inequalities in quality of life, education, culture, and ability to realise one’s maximum potential (which is where it overlaps with ‘equality of opportunity’, fine if it’s allied to pro-active measures to limit and minimise inequality of outcomes). There are many desirable measures to address the problems of climate change that would have the incidental effect of reducing inequality. Removing the charitable status of private schools (public schools so-called) would be a good first step towards greater educational equality, although much more is needed there. No huge effort of imagination is needed to think of numerous other ways of moving towards the objective, if the will is there.

What sort of equality are you asking for, equality of pay, education, housing? Are we to have a grimly uniform society where everyone is equal? I’m keen to know what you ultimately wish for.

Brian replies: In my earlier blog post, quoted in this one, I wrote that:
‘Of course no-one, even the most Utopian, advocates total equality of wealth and income for all; but if there’s to be any justice and humanity in the way society is ordered – real respect for “the equal worth of all” [the phrase approvingly used by Tony Blair] – it’s essential that the state should intervene actively in the economy to minimise the gross inequalities which ‘equality of opportunity’, market forces, flexibility in the labour market, and the rest of the capitalist shibboleths automatically produce.’
It seems to me that gross and blatant inequality, whether of income, wealth, educational and cultural access, health, life expectancy, everyday living conditions, personal security, or any of the other elements that together constitute an ability to enjoy the right to the pursuit of happiness, disfigures the society in which it occurs: creates tensions and divisions which threaten social peace and stability: condemns its victims to material and cultural deprivation: and leads to all the other evils so accurately predicted by Michael Young in the Guardian article from which I quote extensively in my post. The unavoidable corollary of this is that we should pay at least as much attention to the greatest possible equality of outcomes as we do to equality of opportunity. Whether we speak of aiming at the greatest practicable degree of equality in all fields, or of pre-empting or eliminating as far as may be practicable the inequalities which flow from equality of opportunity, the principle is the same. My charge is that Tony Blair, in his effective dismissal of equality of outcomes and his commitment to equality of opportunity and a meritocracy, doesn’t understand any of this, and that his position belongs on the right of the political spectrum and not on the left. As Anthony Crosland argued long ago, the concept of equality is central to the modern interpretation of socialism. But then, to be fair, our Labour prime minister doesn’t claim to be a socialist. Fortunately some of his ministerial colleagues are more enlightened, and in some limited respects have acted accordingly since 1997.