it would be almost physically impossible for all people to get an equal start. the only way to do so would be to clone each and every person from the same donor and then "grow" the fetuses in identical artificial wombs.
I know it chaps the asses of many of the liberal crowd...but the plain and simple truth is that some people are born to be smarter than others. all the opportunity in the world is not going to make a guy with an 82 IQ equal to a guy with a 150 IQ.
This is real life you goofy ****, this isn't Forrest Gump. your kid is stupid and he can't be a shrimp boat captain.
Your right Oscar and thats the reason that the rights incessant whines that anyone that isnt successful is a parasite....some people dont have the means or the opportunity to be successful...period...thats why the 1% and their rhetoric have turned me off
This is where we run into trouble.
Everybody wants a decent standard of living. If you're American, when you say "decent standard of living" you mean by AMERICAN standards, not Somalian or Brazilian Favela standards.
Not everybody is able to achieve a decent standard of living on their own. They don't have the smarts, the social skills, the technical ability, the education... or the basic intellect and knowlege and aptitude to get the education. Work as hard as they may, they end up stuck in relatively menial jobs because that's all they can handle. That's Forrest Gump in real life.
I don't think any reasonable person is arguing that Forrest deserves the same lifestyle as a CEO, or a professional with a Doctorate, or even a barely-middle-class guy. Obviously success and hard work should be rewarded; education and innovation and enterpreneurship should be rewarded well.
But Forrest Gump, dim candle though he be, is still a human being (one of the movie's big messages I think, is that Forrest is morally and ethically
better than most people despite his mental limitations) and deserves consideration as such. The Gumps of this nation still ought to be able to work and make enough money to afford reasonably decent housing, a reliable car, reasonably good medical care, all the basics of life in America (electricity, indoor plumbing, a phone... these days throw in some reasonable Internet access, you almost can't get a job without it), and maybe even a few small luxuries. It wasn't so long ago that a textile mill worker who didn't even finish high school could still afford to raise a family in fairly decent living conditions.
In recent years this has been getting harder. The cost of living is rising faster than what unskilled or semi-skilled labor gets paid. Families in the bottom half are struggling more than they used to, while seeing the top quartile living in luxury their grandparents never dreamed of.
If Gump works his ass off, he deserves a little piece of the American dream, even if he never will be a rocket scientist. A little help for the Gumps of the nation
now might help prevent a full-scale armed revolt when it gets to the point that Gump can't feed his family on the fifty cents a day some would like to make his paycheck.