President Obama got it right!!

President Obama’s choice to emphasize fairness rather than equality in the State of the Union address makes good political sense. Although equality is the central concern of the Occupy Wall Street movement, focused as it is on income disparities, Americans are at least ambivalent toward equality as a primary value. They think emphasizing equality was O.K. in the context of the Civil War and segregation because inequality was institutionalized in those days and it is a good thing those days are over.

But Americans also hear in the invocation of equality an appeal to the redistribution of income. Americans don’t mind if income is redistributed as long as it is done by market forces and not the government. Income equality is fine if it is “naturally” achieved, but if it is socially engineered it can be perceived as class warfare, a plot against the well-to-do

Fairness is a better mantra than equality, for it rests on a notion of formal equality — everyone should be treated alike — rather than a notion of substantive equality — everyone should have the same stuff. Fairness, rather than undermining the American virtues of self-realization and entrepreneurial advancement, establishes a framework within which these virtues can be exercised. Fairness doesn’t tamper with the rules or skew them in the direction of the unemployed or impoverished: it just insists that the rules be followed and that no one gets to go to the head of the line if it is not his turn.

The difference between equality and fairness can be illustrated by considering the issue of Mitt Romney’s taxes. In the eyes of most Americans, it is O.K. that Mitt Romney makes more money than they do; there’s no demand for the equalizing of income so that he can be brought down to their level. But it is not O.K. (or at least the Democrats will argue) for Mitt Romney to be paying a lower tax rate than his housecleaner. It’s unfair. So inequalities that arise from the unequal abilities of people and even from the unequal distribution of luck and birth are all right; but the kind of unfairness that occurs when someone plays by different rules than the rules you are held to isn’t.

President Obama can take the fairness mantra all the way to the bank and a second term. He can make the same argument up and down the line. Is it fair that children who live in school districts with a poor tax base because the residents of the district are poor should receive an inferior education? (Notice that this is not an argument against school districts made up of wealthy people; it is an argument against allowing wealth to skew the educational opportunities that should be fairly available to everyone.) Is it fair that Internet pirates in China can appropriate without paying for it the intellectual property of Americans who rely for their income on ideas they have copyrighted? Is it fair that those who fail to purchase health insurance take advantage of hospital emergency rooms at the expense of those who do the responsible thing? Is it fair that the voices of some citizens should be incredibly amplified because they have the money to buy a megaphone larger than the National Broadcasting Company? Is it fair that insurance companies that take premiums from us in return for taking risk make every effort possible to insulate themselves from risk, by refusing, as they long have, to cover pre-existing conditions?
Equality and freedom have often been trumpeted as the key words in the lexicon of liberal democracy. But they are too abstract and they won’t play in the political arena. Everyone understands fair, and fair is the word Obama should be uttering again and again and again.

it is O.K. that Mitt Romney makes more money than they do; there’s no demand for the equalizing of income so that he can be brought down to their level. But it is not O.K. (or at least the Democrats will argue) for Mitt Romney to be paying a lower tax rate than his housecleaner. It’s unfair.

His vision of fairness is on the money

did you really think he would go against USA embeeded foreign policy