There is a long-running debate between those who choose equality as the foundation for all policies and decisions on one hand, and those who choose liberty as the foundation on the other hand. The underlying goal of both options is to help others and make life better for all.

The Wall Street Journal addresses these differing approaches in Free People, Free Markets:

Another lesson is how the political pendulum swings between freedom and equality, those competing poles of Western political thought. These columns emphasize liberty, but on occasion those who prize equality can provide a necessary corrective. The best example is the civil-rights movement, which used federal power to break the government-enforced tyranny of Jim Crow. 
 
Yet those who promote freedom typically do better by equality than the progressives who elevate equality do by freedom. The progressive project invariably descends into subsidy and mandate to coerce men and women who resist the commands of those in power.
I will go further.

Those who emphasize liberty do better by equality than those who emphasize equality do by equality.

The massive amount of economic wealth obtained by the poor and middle class in the last 200 years has come from economic and political liberty.

Want to make life better for the have-nots?

Based on everything I’ve ever read, observed first hand, observed second hand, heard, or thought through, the best way to increase equality for the poor and marginalized is to promote liberty.

 

 


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