Opportunity, Security, Prosperity, and Fairness

What should Americans reasonably expect from their country?

Among the most important answers are opportunity, security, prosperity, and fairness.

These four goals appear repeatedly in debates about the economy, education, healthcare, housing, taxation, government programs, and many other issues.

Most Americans can probably see value in all four. The difficulty is that they do not always point in exactly the same direction.

A policy designed to increase security may involve greater government spending or regulation. A policy designed to maximize economic growth may produce unequal results. A policy intended to increase fairness may reduce some people's freedom to use their resources as they choose.

The challenge is therefore not simply to choose one goal.

It is to understand what each means, where the goals reinforce one another, and where difficult trade-offs arise.

Opportunity

Opportunity means having a genuine chance to improve one's circumstances.

It does not mean that everyone will achieve the same result. People differ in their abilities, interests, effort, decisions, and circumstances.

But a society can make opportunity more or less accessible.

A child born into a poor family may face obstacles that a child born into a wealthy family does not. Someone growing up in a community with weak schools may begin adulthood with fewer options. A person who wants to start a business may face unnecessary barriers that have little to do with whether the business could succeed.

These differences do not mean that every unequal outcome is unfair.

They do raise an important question:

How much should a person's future depend on circumstances they did not choose?

A society committed to opportunity should try to remove unnecessary barriers while preserving room for individual effort, initiative, and different choices.

Security

Security means having some protection against the risks that can seriously disrupt a person's life.

Some risks are personal: illness, disability, accidents, unemployment, or the loss of a family member.

Others are broader: recessions, natural disasters, crime, financial crises, or other events that can affect large numbers of people at once.

No society can eliminate these risks.

The question is how much protection society should provide against them.

Security can come from many sources. Individuals can save money and obtain insurance. Families can support one another. Employers can provide benefits. Charities and communities can help people in difficulty. Government can provide programs or services when other mechanisms are insufficient.

A secure society does not have to guarantee that no one will experience hardship.

Rather, it can seek to prevent ordinary setbacks from becoming catastrophic and permanent whenever practical.

Prosperity

Prosperity is the ability of people and society to produce and enjoy a high standard of living.

It includes more than income. It encompasses the goods and services people can obtain, the quality of their homes and communities, their access to technology and infrastructure, and the opportunities available to them.

Economic growth matters because a growing economy can create more resources with which to address both private and public needs.

If the economy produces more, there is potentially more available for workers, businesses, families, investors, and government.

But economic growth alone does not tell us how those benefits are distributed.

A country can become considerably wealthier while some people experience little improvement in their own circumstances.

That raises a second question:

How should the benefits of prosperity be shared?

Fairness

Fairness is perhaps the most difficult of the four concepts because people can disagree substantially about what fairness means.

Some people emphasize equal treatment: the same rules should apply to everyone.

Others emphasize equality of opportunity: people should have a genuine chance to succeed regardless of the circumstances into which they were born.

Others place more emphasis on outcomes, arguing that very large disparities can themselves indicate that a system is unfair.

There are also competing ideas about responsibility.

For example, should two people who make different choices necessarily receive the same outcome?

Most Americans would probably say no.

At the same time, many people would also agree that circumstances completely outside a person's control can matter when judging whether an outcome is fair.

This is why fairness cannot easily be reduced to a single formula.

Equal Opportunity Is Not Equal Outcome

One of the most important distinctions in this discussion is between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.

Equal opportunity means that people should have a meaningful chance to succeed.

Equal outcome would mean that people end up with substantially similar results.

These are very different ideas.

A society can seek to improve opportunity without attempting to make everyone's income, wealth, career, or living circumstances equal.

Indeed, differences in outcomes can be a natural consequence of allowing people to make different choices.

One person may work longer hours. Another may choose more leisure. One may take the risk of starting a business. Another may prefer a stable job.

If a society respects individual freedom, some differences in outcomes are inevitable.

The question is whether those differences arise primarily from legitimate differences in choices and circumstances or from barriers that society could reasonably remove.

When the Goals Reinforce One Another

Opportunity, security, prosperity, and fairness are not necessarily competing goals.

They can reinforce one another.

Good education can increase opportunity while also contributing to economic prosperity.

A growing economy can create jobs and increase government resources.

Reliable healthcare can provide greater security while allowing people to remain productive.

A fair legal system can protect individual rights while giving businesses and individuals the confidence to invest and participate in the economy.

Well-designed social programs can provide security while helping people return to work and become independent.

The important word is well-designed.

A policy can have a worthy objective and still produce unintended consequences.

When the Goals Conflict

There are also genuine trade-offs.

Suppose a government provides a generous benefit to people who are not working. This may increase economic security, but if the benefit is reduced sharply when someone begins earning income, it could discourage some people from taking a job.

Suppose government imposes extensive regulations to protect workers or consumers. Some regulations may provide valuable protections, but excessive or poorly designed regulation can also increase costs and make it harder for businesses to operate.

Suppose taxes are increased to provide additional public services or reduce economic inequality. Those taxes may accomplish their intended purpose, but they also reduce the resources individuals and businesses have available for other purposes.

These examples do not demonstrate that any particular policy is good or bad.

They demonstrate why policies need to be evaluated by looking at both their intended benefits and their broader effects.

Fairness Does Not Mean Everyone Gets the Same Thing

A useful distinction is between equal treatment and identical treatment.

Treating people fairly does not necessarily mean giving everyone exactly the same thing.

For example, a public service may need to provide additional assistance to someone with a disability in order to give that person comparable access.

Similarly, a progressive tax system treats taxpayers differently according to their financial circumstances.

Whether such differences are justified is a legitimate subject of political debate.

The broader point is that fairness requires us to ask why people are being treated differently and whether the difference has a reasonable justification.

Security and Responsibility

Security also has to be balanced with personal responsibility.

If people know that society will provide some assistance when they experience unavoidable hardship, that can provide valuable protection.

But if policies remove the consequences of every decision, they can weaken incentives to make responsible choices.

A well-designed system should therefore distinguish between circumstances people could reasonably control and circumstances they could not.

Even that distinction is not always simple.

People's lives are complicated, and many outcomes result from a mixture of personal choices and external circumstances.

The goal should be to encourage responsibility without treating every person who needs help as though they simply failed to try hard enough.

Prosperity and Fairness

Economic prosperity and fairness can also be viewed as competing priorities, but they do not necessarily have to be.

A prosperous economy creates resources that can benefit society broadly.

At the same time, a society in which large numbers of people feel largely excluded from economic progress may face serious social and political problems.

The challenge is to create an economic system that rewards work, investment, innovation, entrepreneurship, and risk-taking while ensuring that ordinary people have meaningful opportunities to participate in that prosperity.

That requires looking beyond a single measure such as total economic output.

We should also ask:

• Are wages and incomes sufficient for people to support themselves?

• Can people afford housing?

• Can families obtain necessary healthcare?

• Can people build savings?

• Can young people realistically establish independent lives?

• Can someone who starts with little improve their circumstances?

Economic prosperity matters most when people can actually experience its benefits.

There Is No Perfect Balance

There is no mathematical formula that can tell us exactly how much opportunity, security, prosperity, and fairness a society should have.

Reasonable people can disagree about the proper balance.

That is one reason political debates cannot be settled simply by declaring that a particular policy is "fair" or "unfair," "pro-growth" or "anti-growth," "compassionate" or "irresponsible."

We need to ask what the policy actually does.

Who benefits?

Who bears the costs?

What incentives does it create?

What unintended consequences might result?

Does it improve people's ability to make their own choices?

Does it create opportunities or merely redistribute existing resources?

Does it provide security without unnecessarily discouraging independence?

Does it promote prosperity?

Does it treat people according to principles that can reasonably be defended as fair?

These questions can help move the discussion from political labels toward practical results.

What Should We Aim For?

A better America does not have to choose between opportunity, security, prosperity, and fairness.

It should seek all four.

The difficult part is determining how to pursue them together.

We want people to have opportunities to build better lives.

We want them to have enough security that unavoidable hardship does not destroy those opportunities.

We want an economy capable of producing increasing prosperity.

And we want the rules and distribution of opportunities and responsibilities to be sufficiently fair that people can regard the system as legitimate.

These goals will sometimes conflict.

When they do, we should acknowledge the trade-off rather than pretending it does not exist.

And when a policy can advance several of these goals at once, we should recognize that as well.

The ultimate objective is not to maximize one abstract principle.

It is to build a society in which people have the freedom and opportunity to build good lives, the security to withstand reasonable risks, the prosperity that makes those lives materially possible, and a sense that the system operates according to fair and understandable rules.

That provides a useful foundation for the next question:

What should government actually accomplish?