Is Inequality a Bad Thing? (2)

If good luck determined whether we are rich or poor, is the inequality led by good luck a bad thing? If the inequality is bad, does the public policy remedy it? How does the public policy do it? Let me think about it:

When you were a student, you might have a lot of tests. Did you have high scores? In fact I have got not high scores. I wasn't a brilliant student at school. If you were a smart student, I think that you should have the pride of being smart.

Here I would like to have a analogy: not economic gap but test-score gap would be the problem to be solved. (An analogy is a way of explaining something by comparing it to something else. In this case, I explain the issue of economic gap by comparing it to the issue of test-score gap. I once met a person and she didn't understand what an analogy is like and so what I said. Probably my explanation with an analogy was unclear and intangible to her. Using an analogy is very helpful to explain difficult questions but sometimes is deceptive to some people. Be careful for using an analogy when you explain something important.)

A brilliant student can have good scores of test at school. He or she is capable of having a good reputation and passing the entrance exam of high privileged school. In contrast an incompetent student cannot have high scores and go to prestigious school. Generally highly scored students are more likely to be the candidates for good and highly paid jobs. And so test-score gap is likely closely correlated with economic gap. The results of test taken at school are thought to be linked to the economic status to which they belong. Kazuo Nishimura, an economics professor of Kyoto University, says that those who have taken a math test are likely to be higher paid employees.

As he says, those who took a math test usually had studied math at school and built up a logical thinking in their mind, which would likely make them paid highly. I am somewhat skeptical that math causes a high-paid work. I agree that a logical mind leads us to a good work but I doubt that a way of thinking of those who studied math is always more logical and more mathematical and more likely to be a high-paid job.

Is mathematician paid better than writer? It is beyond the scope of my today's topic. To be back to the test-score analogy, if you said that economic inequality is a bad thing and should be reduced in the satndpoint of social justice, would you think that the test scores of smart students should be reduced in the standpoint of social justice? If you thought it hopeful that everyone is equal, would you think it hopeful that everyone gets the same score? If a smart student gets high scores, should he or she be scolded for his or her high performance? In the same way, should he or she be blamed for low performance?

No parent and no teacher would tell us to get low grades of test. However no person would suggest that our society should be inequal. Somebody's getting high grades leads to a gap among the members of the classroom: one student who gets high scores would be appreciated than the other. Similarly, one person who produces more outputs would be evaluated highly than the other.

In our society, we are not and I think should not be completely equal. It is natural that we are somewhat different from each other. I don't think that economic gap itself is a bad thing. I would like to say that it is not the problem but may be the symptom of the problem. Rather what the economic inequality tells is the serious problem that policymaker should takle. What is behind the economic gap in Japan?I'll tell you what I think is behind it. (To be continued...)