The "right" amount of social equality

[Redalgo]

Option two because number one seems impossible.

Social equality requires classlessness - everyone believes everyone else is co-equal in every culturally-relevant, perceptible way. There are many relationships that encourage us to divide ourselves into ranks of superiority, equality, and inferiority depending on the setting. Even if we were to go the old Native route of believing nobody has the right to give a command to any other - which is itself an anarchical circumstance where there could be no enforcement of equality - there would be lingering distinctions drawn amongst people along the lines of having varied attributes and skills.

The best we can reasonably hope for is a solidaristic order where a limited degree of inequality is coped with using appeals to a shared group identity. It may be the "workers" or "international proletariat" for Marxian types, the "People" for my ilk, or else to smaller in-groups by relatively conservative folks - e.g. tribal appeals to patriotism, if passionate and effective enough, may get people to set aside many of their differences and treat each other equally to better pursue the national interest. Socialists really need to understand that an objectively classless order is not going to happen.

In response to some earlier posts, social and economic equalities appear to be inseparable. Scarcity of resources contributes to differences in social status... and if there were no differences in social status folks would have no reasonable basis on which to defend any amount of economic inequality amongst themselves, right? "Equality," "freedom," and "justice" are subjective and thrown around as convenient political buzz words. They can only be inter-subjectively achieved (or perceived?) in a group of people.

Antonio's proposed maximum for the income inequality ratio would be quite lovely, by the way, though I suppose 1:25 or even 1:30 could be reasonable provided all the low-end incomes are livable. In the U.S. today it appears that incomes vary from nothing to just shy of $142 million/yr.