They Keep Using That Word

 and I'm sure (1) they know what it means, and (2) hope that listeners don't.  

Reports are going around of Biden delivering addresses in which he is promising equity.  The Washington Times opens up with a statement that, “In the span of 13 minutes, President Biden used the word "equity" nine times. Be prepared to hear it a lot more.” 

At the televised briefing for reporters on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki used the word five times. White House adviser Susan Rice was at the same briefing and used it 18 times.

Equity is one of those words that's deceptive so that it can get past a lot of people.  Many people confuse it with or assume it means equality, but it's actually the opposite of equality.  Equality is what made America the shining beacon on the hill.  Equality is embedded in the Declaration of Independence's statement that "All men are created equal."  Everyone has the same shot to make something of themself.  Everyone can't achieve the same results because we are never completely equal.  A population never has the same skills and desires across its entirety.  Some of us are good with math, some of us are dancers.  Some are born caring for strangers, while some are lawyers.

A dancer trying to be a consulting engineer would be about as successful as I would be in a dance off against Paula Abdul.

Equality, then, is about the starting line, not the finish line.  Equal opportunity to do what they want to do and how they want to do it and see how far they can get in life.  Equity though, is about the finish line; it's about equality of outcomes.  It says that if the dancer wants to design, for an egregious example, the flight control software on a Boeing 737 they should get the same outcome as the person who worked to become a software guru.  It's not equality of opportunity for equally qualified applicants, and what seems to be the official line is it's giving a hand up to the oppressed.  Inevitably, someone is going to get hurt.   

Meritocracy is gone.  The only way people who really aren't as good as others get the job is if the people who are better qualified are pushed out of the way.  There's not an infinite number of jobs, so if someone less qualified is put into the job, someone more qualified gets hurt.  Remember the Asian students who sued Harvard because they were pushed aside to make room for "affirmative action" students less academically qualified than they were?  Did you notice that the courts thought it was just peachy to discriminate against one group to let another group into the school, ruling in Harvard's favor over the Asian students?   Expect lots more of that. 

I find this concept drawing seems to summarize the situation pretty well. 

Equity sounds good in theory, but equity in practice rarely agrees with equity in theory.  The reality might well be nobody gets the results they want, or it might be only one of the three does.

Get used to hearing the word equity.  We're only one week into the Ho Jo administration so you'll be hearing it a lot.  Government is good at killing people and breaking things; they're good at putting people in prison.  Asking them to re-order society to improve outcomes is a mistake, provable by virtually every big program they've ever instituted.  Remember, poverty had been in a 20 year decline when LBJ declared war on it in 1964 and the poverty level reported by the Census Bureau is virtually unchanged since 1966.