Welfare and affirmative action are traps. They tell the recipients that they are getting special treatment because they can’t compete on equal terms. After a while, the recipients come to believe they really are inadequate and that they genuinely need what should be a temporary safety net for all but the truly unfortunate few.
There is no such thing as “fair”. Children of ten complain that certain things aren’t “fair”, but the truth is that life isn’t fair and there is no way it can be made fair. If you take away all the artificial impediments, some people will work hard, using everything they can to build a fortune. Others will not want to work so hard: they won’t do as well. Some will be plain unlucky – they’ll work, but circumstances will defeat them. Still others will be fortune’s favored, and every chance will fall their way. And some won’t have the ability to succeed no matter how hard they try.
To take the wealth of the successful and give it to the less successful in order to make the outcomes “fairer” is viciously unfair to those who have worked for their success, and worse, it sends the message that it is better not to try, because that way you can’t fail, and you’ll get rewarded anyway. Too much of that, and no-one will do anything at all.?We understand that these points run counter to your whole life experience, Mr President. You have the singular misfortune of having lived in a bubble where results were totally disconnected from actions and have compounded this by surrounding yourself with others who suffer the same problem.
Not much in that letter really caught my eye, but these few paragraphs really nailed it for me, especially since these thoughts are all things I’ve expressed in the past at one time or another.