Must-Read: Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig: Lost Opportunity

**Must-Read: I am with ESB here as a matter of moral philosophy: divorced from the decrease in inequality or a rise in total production produced by a better use of our collective talents, more opportunity is not a good–unless you place a high weight on the continuation of the current social order, that is, and see avenues for upward mobility within the system as an important safety valve keeping those who would otherwise make serious trouble from doing so:

**Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig**: [Lost Opportunity](http://www.democracyjournal.org/38/lost-opportunity.php): “None of this is to assert that what Putnam observes about the inequality of opportunity…

>…is really wrong… though… data suggest that Putnam is mistaken to believe the problem is speedily worsening. The trouble… is rather that it critiques how people are coping with the reality… by working intensely to ensure their children’s success on the wealthy end, or failing to do so on the poor end[,]… instead of taking issue with inequality itself. A handful of Putnam’s solutions to the opportunity gap would potentially reduce inequality…. Others seem to be good ideas on their own merits…. But his gaze falls upon opportunity, not equality. And these are, in the end, two separate things…

September 17, 2015

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