From Hand Up to Hand Out
- Tamara Shrugged
- May 29
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 12
“Essentially, the Founders believed equality was a natural right, an endowment from the creator. Equality was something you moved from in building out your life, and it was the role of government to guard and protect that right”. – Equality of Opportunity
To right the wrongs in Europe’s monarchies and aristocracies that prevented social mobility under their caste system, America’s founders created a structure of social equality, one of equal opportunity, rights, and treatment. Under the Constitution and the legal system, the rules of the game apply equally to all. Since the Founders believed that equality was a natural right, it was the role of the government to defend and protect it. Equality of opportunity meant that the laws and public policies would not favor one over another, allowing for individual initiative to determine each individual’s outcome. The addition of the amendments to end slavery, add voting rights for blacks and women, and equal protection under the law secured this equality for everyone.
In David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd’s 2023 book, “Equality of Opportunity”, the authors recount the history of the provision of Equality of Opportunity from its inception in the US Constitution to its eventual decline following the progressive era that sought to replace opportunity with outcomes. Using the Herbert Hoover/Franklin D. Roosevelt debates in the 1930s as a launching point, the binary debate continues today. That is, equality of opportunity or equality of results.
Hoover believed that economic relief belonged to charities and churches, and not the federal government. Not only would government intervention lead to a loss of self-reliance, but to distribute from one to another is to “hold back the speedy, so they are equal to the slow”. Since individuals were responsible for finding their opportunities, anything else would create a fundamental change in the character of America.
In FDR’s bill of rights, freedom from want and fear was added because Roosevelt believed that industrialization took away equality of opportunity. Roosevelt’s New Deal began to address economic security in response to the Great Depression. During this period of economic insecurity, Roosevelt began laying the groundwork for the welfare state by expanding the doctrine of equality of opportunity beyond one of a constitutional and legal matter, to one that included a move towards economic equality.
But it would be Lyndon B. Johnson who finally shifted the equality of opportunity of Roosevelt’s safety net, to a womb-to-tomb dependency of equality not only in economics, but in worth and happiness, and in class and race. Yet, despite the economic boom of the 1960s, Johnson was unable to deliver solutions to poverty. His system of government planning and redistribution schemes created disincentives, leading to gas lines, high unemployment, and double-digit inflation.
After decades of progressive advancement and little conservative pushback, Ronald Reagan provided the first strike to the New Deal and the threat against equality of opportunity as understood by our founders. He sought to reduce both the size and scope of government by lowering taxes, reducing regulation, and shifting control back to the private sector. His mantra that government is not the solution, but is always the problem, led to more economic growth, and more jobs, solving the poverty problem. By restoring individual initiative, Reagan revived the idea that the proper role of government was to protect rights, not equalize outcomes.
Although we all begin with equal rights under the law, we are all wildly unequal in talent and ability. As such, we begin at different starting points due to our various skill sets, wealth, health, work ethic, family structure, and drive. From there, it is for each of us to pursue our paths. Through free markets, our society's greatest equalizer, greater opportunities lead to greater equality. Horatio Alger’s society proves that anyone with a strong mind and self-determination can rise from the lowest echelon.
Progressivism believed that too much freedom provided unequal outcomes, so it was the government’s job to level the playing field to provide economic and social equality. The watershed moment from equality of opportunity to equality of outcomes began with the shift from a focus on production and capital accumulation to the redistribution of income, from the freedom of growing the pie to the paternal mandate on how to divvy it up. The founders believed that greater equality came from political and economic freedom. But providing the same legal protection does not and cannot guarantee equal outcomes. The consequences of the welfare state have roundly proved them right.

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