Folks acting like Kamala’s “equality vs equity” tweet is some wildly radical idea have perhaps not been around an elementary school recently?

Below: a sign from one child’s classroom, another child’s homework assignment

The crudely drawn picture represents my child’s answer: “everyone gets the exact same amount of food” vs “everyone gets how much food they need because some people are older and bigger” — aka, even small children can get how exact sameness can be unfair

I talk about this at length in my forthcoming book, but it pains me that people talk about “equality vs equity” as if there is one set of life outcomes and we have to make a once-and-for-all unitary decision about whether we care about equity for the whole kit and kaboodle...

when clearly we can care about equality of outcome VS equity of starting conditions VS strict equality of opportunity as defined by sameness differently for different goods & outcomes....

I, for one, don’t think equality of outcome with regards to, say, mathematics achievement is possible or desirable. Access to health care, on the other hand, is a totally different story

Anyway, here is Arneson on four conceptions of “equal opportunity” - a phrase that I think is essentially useless in its imprecision https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecoj.12531

or, if you prefer, here is @MadeleineLEngle: “like and equal are not the same thing at all!”

(And stop with the replies with Marx quotes. Calling everything Marxism is lazy and uninteresting )