Statism vs equality

According to this report, schools are institutionally racist. This raises the question: when will people realize that the state, far from promoting equality, can actually be an obstacle to it?
Here are  other ways in which the state is inegalitarian:
1. The best state schools are in areas with the highest house prices, meaning that the rich get better state education than the poor.
2. "Areas with the highest levels of poor health have the lowest numbers of doctors, dentists and other health professionals living and working there."
3. The state's hierarchical employment structure causes inequalities in how long people live. The Whitehall studies into civil servants' health says (pdf):

The more senior you are in the employment  hierarchy, the longer you might expect to live compared to people in lower employment grades...The social gradient was observed for a range of different diseases.

There's a simple message here for the left. If you're serious about wanting greater equality, it's foolish to rely upon government. You achieve equality by empowering people, not by trusting their fate to the state.

Comments

[Alex]

Ah yes. Of course they can always go to Eton, and a pony.

[dearieme]

"There's a simple message here for the left... it's foolish to rely upon government." But in Britain the left does rely on government: always has, surely? Who else would give it cushy jobs and power?

[Planeshift]

It would be a pretty bad idea for the left to rely on government for power, after all for much of the 20th century it was in opposition and only managed to gain power by ditching its traditional beliefs.

[chris y]

"The best state schools are in areas with the highest house prices, meaning that the rich get better state education than the poor."

To what extent is this a function of the inegalitarianism of the state? When a school improves, prospective parents want to buy houses in its catchment area, and wealthier parents can afford to pay more for such housing, thus driving up prices. That is a market mechanism, entirely outwith the scope of state intervention. Excellent teachers and heads are, realistically, a scarce resource, so unless the state is going to intervene to ration the number of good teachers at every school, it's hard to see what it could do to make the situation more equitable.

[steves]

Planeshift:-

If you look at the last century the left as either been in power or the supposed right have been enacting left wing policy.
It seems that the left have finally realised that markets work and have accepted to them a degree. However on all other issues policy is strictly socialist and always as been.

Remember it was the soacialist goverment of Edward Heath who abolished most grammar schools, had prices and earnings policies, took us into a non democratic european union

[guest]

chris v:

The situation is vastly inequitable because state schools are funded by income taxes which steal from the productive in progressive proportion to their contribution to society, while their economic benefits are pocketed by wealthy, idle, parasitic landowners for doing exactly nothing.

The state could easily remedy this distortion by recovering the publicly-created rent of land as a source of revenue.

[Rob]

Because, obviously, securing people rights to whatever it is they for empowerment is something that should be left to the market.