We have all been hearing Obama say "fair" about every other word, but no one seems to know what that means. Well, I have been trying to figure out a good definition and explanation of exactly what "fair" means. After watching the Stossel show on TV, I think I finally got that extra "Dot" that allows "fair" to be defined, so here goes.
Some one on the Stossel show showed a research chart that showed proof of my blog on "Tendency To The Mean". If you did not read that one, go back and read it. Their chart showed that in one or two generations people who were from families who were in the lower 25%, 60% of them moved up and earned more than their parents. The chart also showed that people from the top 25% earning families, of those 60% moved down and earned less than their parents. This was exactly the theme of my blog on "Tendency To The Mean". In the data shown above, what was happening was that people from the high end and low end both tended to go toward the mean or average. Now what does this have to do with the concept of fair?
The main thing is that when we look at who is poor and who is rich over time, these are not the "same" people. People are often poorer when they are young and at mid life are rich and then die poor. Now a little history. In old Europe and many third world countries, if you were born poor, you can expect to die poor. If, on the other hand, you were born rich, you will die rich. If your father owned the mill, you were rich and would die rich. If your parents worked in that mill, you know that they will never own the mill and will die as poor as they started out. This is the way most of the world was for thousands of years. The United States was a special case and from the beginning, people who started on the bottom poor had a good chance of getting rich. The California gold rush in 1849 was a good example or free land to homestead here in the United States. People who never owned an acre of land for generations were able to own land here.
The Stossel show showed those countries where doing business was the easiest and the ones who had the highest per capita income. They were the same. It also showed that we were 10th on that list and have been going down over the past 10 years. The other thing that the data showed was that a larger percentages of people in the best countries moved easier and faster both up and down in terms of income. What I got from this was my definition of "fair". The easier and faster people could move up and down in terms of income on the basis of merit, the more "fair" that country is. The fact that in the highest per capita countries, people are moving toward a higher average income is significant. Income redistribution makes the average go down so if we follow Obama's model, we would be tending to a smaller income.
Can you imagine living in a country where there was little chance of moving up on the basis of merit? How about living in a country with a very low per capita income combined with a poor chance of moving up on the basis of merit. I would predict that this same country was among the most "unfair". When poor people are moving up they are happy and when rich people are moving down, they are unhappy. People don't measure "fair" by how much they have, but which way they are moving. The more laws and regulations that the government creates, the more "unfair" the place gets and like wise, the fewer the regulations, the "fairer" the place is.
This bog is a little messy, but I think you get the idea that the ability to move up or down is one of the best definitions of "fair". Now if you don't take advantage of your free education thru high school or do drugs or get knocked up out of wedlock, you can expect "not" to move up. That is because you lack merit. You did this to yourself. If this is why you are poor, it seems to me that the system is perfectly "fair". The "fair" system works. If the system allowed an irresponsible person to move up, that is what would "Not" be "fair".
