Jordan Peterson Does Not Support ‘Equality of Opportunity’
When conservatives decry “equality of outcomes,” they’re usually evading a debate about structural inequalities in the distribution of opportunity
By Eric Levitz
In the United States today, the richest 0.1 percent of households command as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined; the average CEO collects 140 times as large a salary as his (or, very occasionally her) typical employee; the median white family is 12 times richer than the median black one; and the superrich can expect to live 15 years longer than the poor.
And North America’s most influential public intellectual has convinced himself that one our society’s biggest problems is its excessive intolerance for inequality.
Jordan Peterson believes that America is besieged by “postmodernists” who wish to build an economic system that will guarantee “equal outcomes” for all individuals. In his book, YouTube videos, lectures, and newspaper interviews, the Canadian psychologist — turned patron-saint of “failsons” — decries the notion that justice requires total economic equality with such fervor and frequency, you’d think he was speaking from a Stalinist gulag.
