A fair and equal society is not even desirable. It encourages complacency. Fair and equal is a progressive dream that must be kept in check or we'll all be equally miserable with no reason to excel at anything.
You may think your dog loves you but he's smart enough to know that his basic need is being met with virtually no effort on his part. He's being fed. The bonus is that he's in out of the weather too. The difference between him and a human is that he doesn't possess the capacity for greed and envy. He's happy with what's provided for him. A capacity most humans don't possess because our nature is to to try to achieve more. It's something that our modern society represses as the nanny state flourishes in attempts to gain political favor within the masses.
Humans need three things to survive in the U.S. of A. Food, clothing and shelter. That's it. How many in this country have died of starvation? Clothing is plentiful. How many died from exposure to the elements? How many are happy with just those three things?
We guarantee equal opportunity for our citizens but not equal outcome. That's essentially the answer to the OP's post. The answer to the question raised. We cannot legislate equal outcome. It's little more than common sense. Instead of teaching our children that it's wrong for others to have more than they do, we should start again teaching them that there are no limits on what they can achieve. It will take three generations to turn things around. Time is short.
I used to think this. Partially at least. Reality is different though once you actually see it in action.
I live in one of those socialist European leftist countries now. Been living on and off here and in the USA so I've seen both. If I had to kinda summarize both systems here's what you get:
USA
The rich, powerful, smart, and best of the best have nearly unlimited opportunities to do anything they want. It's not as great as it used to be since the competition is incredible for those few positions but it's still very true. If you're the best of the best then this is the country for you.
The rest of the population nobody gives a shit about though. There's no real job security since unions are frowned upon, health care is expensive, school is expensive, daycare is expensive, you get almost no vacation, no social benefits, etc. You basically work for the best of the best and spend all your money on survival. There's no way to get ahead unless you are the best of the best, come from a rich/powerful family, or get lucky.
Today we have a population that is increasingly in debt and spending all their money on daycare, health insurance, etc while making 0.5% on any money they do manage to squirrel away. Greater parts of the population keep blowing wealth by investing it in the dot com bubble and inflated real estate while the wealth gap grows larger. When they retire they'll be living on a whooping $2000 a month in social security and 401K benefits.
We get told that we pay less in taxes so that we have the choice to buy what we want with our money. That doesn't work very well for the regular Joe. It just saves the rich an enormous amount of money.
Europe (at least the countries I've lived in)
There is a social backbone in society that says that as long as you work you get social benefits. Vacation, sick leave, maternity leave, reasonable percentage of your salary as pension, health care, college educations, day care, etc.
You pay more in taxes to get these benefits.
Unions have power so people have job stability. You still can get fired. If they write you up 3 times you're out. However you don't have these absurdly low salaries that would leave people in poverty. People at fast food restaurants and retail shops probably make more than many of you since they make $20 or more per hour in places like Norway. Yeah, people at McDonalds make $20 or more per hour as unskilled labor. They don't mind paying $2 for a hamburger instead of $1. People pay more for goods and services so that they don't have large portions of their population scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Overall you have a healthier, more intelligent, and more robust society. Where I see the big difference is that most people are going to be making between say $45,000 and $55,000 and the exceptional will not be able to make those $100,000,000 a year salaries. So while you can look at averages I think it would be interesting to look at an overall distribution. In the USA the top 20% of the population own 85% of the wealth. You don't see that kind of inequality here. What's very telling is that when we had the financial meltdown in 2007 and 2008 the rich got richer in the USA.
Look at the countries that have high innovation. The USA is obviously in the top 5 every year followed by countries like Germany, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. Super highly socialist countries are the main competition. Norway ranks as the most productive country if you look at GDP per hour worked.
It's really fascinating when stereotypes and political talking points meet reality. Europe is not in a great spot right now, just like the USA, but when you start looking at the overall quality of life in Northern and Mainland Europe they have it way better than Americans do. In my opinion at least.
Are people lazy here? Some. Are people lazy in the USA? Some. The only difference is that the lazy here get more benefits.
