Up is the only direction from way in the bottom

In response to this post on the accident of birth, my commenter-friend disagrees with me and writes:

Just come to China, or India, go to a BPO company ... happiness seeing how far their children have come as compared to them.

I don't deny that these have happened.  Even the children from humble backgrounds have come a long way from those origins.

But, we need to separate two different aspects that we are talking about: The opportunities to anybody, versus the opportunities that exist for the privileged at birth.

Consider, for instance, the schools that kids attend.  Thanks to every government in the world advancing literacy and spending money on education, children from any background can now attend school. (Sadly, there are countries where girls are not educated.)  Even if students do not have electricity at home.

This is a cause for celebration, no doubt.  It is phenomenal an achievement.  We humans deserve credit for making such a world happen.

To look at that development and engage in self-congratulations is, well, not what I do.  To begin with, that is not my job--I am a critic, by choice and by profession.

For another, in this context, if we were to merely engage in rah-rah about literacy even for the disadvantaged, we begin to overlook the serious troubles there. 

Does one imagine, for instance, that a government school in rural Uttar Pradesh is anywhere near the quality of the school that I (and the commenter) went to?  Why are the kids in rural Uttar Pradesh condemned to those godawful schools where teachers might not even come to class, leave alone being horrible teachers in the classroom, while kids in Neyveli get much better education?  Not the kids' fault that they were accidentally born to their parents who live in a certain area, right?

Now, think about how education is merely one out of the gazillion ways in which the accidental birth makes a huge difference in one's life.

Most of us in the political left-of-center always worry ourselves to death that such inequality that arises for no fault ought to be addressed via public policies.  Even while celebrating the fantastic reductions in extreme and absolute poverty, we worry about the uneven competition that exists only because of the accident of birth.

And speaking of inequality, my go-to-expert on this, Branko Milanovic, writes about how complicated this topic is. 

I rest.

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