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Social equality

 

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Social equality



 
 
Social equality is a social
Society

A society is a group of humans characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive culture and/or institutions....
 state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in a certain respect. At the very least, social equality includes equal rights
Equal rights

Equal rights can refer to:*Human rights, when such rights are held in common by all people*Civil rights, when such rights are held in common by all citizens of a nation...
 under the law, such as security
Security

Security is the degree of protection against danger, loss, and criminals. Individuals or actions that encroach upon the condition of protection are responsible for a "breach of security."...
, voting rights, freedom of speech
Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to denote not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used....
 and assembly, and the extent of property rights. However, it also includes access to education
Education

File:Inukshuk Monterrey 1.jpgEducation can be seen as a product or a process and considered in a broad sense or a technical sense. According to philosophy of education George F....
, health care
Health care

File:Ear surgery on a patient.jpgFile:Monoclonal antibodies3.jpgHealth care, or healthcare, refers to the treatment and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the Medicine, pharmaceutical, Dentistry, clinical laboratory sciences , nursing, and allied health professions....
 and other social securities. It also includes equal opportunities and obligations, and so involves the whole society.

Social equality requires the lack of legally enforced social class
Social class

Social class refers to the hierarchy distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. Usually most societies have some notion of social class , but concretely defined social classes are not found in every known type of human societies....
 or caste
Caste

Castes are hereditary systems of wikt:occupation, endogamy, culture, social class, and political power, the assignment of individuals to places in the social hierarchy is determined by social group and culture....
 boundaries and the lack of unjustified discrimination
Discrimination

Discrimination toward or against a person or group is the treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit. It is usually associated with prejudice....
 motivated by an inalienable part of a person's identity.






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Encyclopedia


Social equality is a social
Society

A society is a group of humans characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive culture and/or institutions....
 state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in a certain respect. At the very least, social equality includes equal rights
Equal rights

Equal rights can refer to:*Human rights, when such rights are held in common by all people*Civil rights, when such rights are held in common by all citizens of a nation...
 under the law, such as security
Security

Security is the degree of protection against danger, loss, and criminals. Individuals or actions that encroach upon the condition of protection are responsible for a "breach of security."...
, voting rights, freedom of speech
Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to denote not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used....
 and assembly, and the extent of property rights. However, it also includes access to education
Education

File:Inukshuk Monterrey 1.jpgEducation can be seen as a product or a process and considered in a broad sense or a technical sense. According to philosophy of education George F....
, health care
Health care

File:Ear surgery on a patient.jpgFile:Monoclonal antibodies3.jpgHealth care, or healthcare, refers to the treatment and management of illness, and the preservation of health through services offered by the Medicine, pharmaceutical, Dentistry, clinical laboratory sciences , nursing, and allied health professions....
 and other social securities. It also includes equal opportunities and obligations, and so involves the whole society.

Social equality requires the lack of legally enforced social class
Social class

Social class refers to the hierarchy distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. Usually most societies have some notion of social class , but concretely defined social classes are not found in every known type of human societies....
 or caste
Caste

Castes are hereditary systems of wikt:occupation, endogamy, culture, social class, and political power, the assignment of individuals to places in the social hierarchy is determined by social group and culture....
 boundaries and the lack of unjustified discrimination
Discrimination

Discrimination toward or against a person or group is the treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit. It is usually associated with prejudice....
 motivated by an inalienable part of a person's identity. For example, gender, age, sexual orientation, origin, caste or class, income or property, language, religion, convictions, opinions, health or disability must not result in unequal treatment under the law and should not reduce opportunities unjustifiably.

Social equality, however, does not require communism
Communism

Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarianism, classlessness, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general....
 or income equality. "Equal opportunities" is interpreted as being judged by ability
Ability

Ability may be:* aptitude* ability to pay* Intelligence* physical ability* skill* ExpertAbility may also refer to:* Ability score, in role-playing games...
, which is compatible with a free-market economy. A problem is horizontal inequality
Horizontal inequality

Horizontal inequality is the inequality ? economical, social or other ? that does not follow from a difference in an inherent quality such as intelligence, attractiveness or skills for people or profitability for corporations....
, the inequality of two persons of same origin and ability.

Perfect social equality is an ideal situation that does, for various reasons, not exist in any society in the world today. The reasons for this are widely debated. Reasons cited for social inequality
Social inequality

Social inequality refers to a lack of social equality, where individuals in a society do not have equal social status. Areas of potential social inequality include voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights and access to education, health care and other social goods....
 include commonly economics
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
, immigration
Immigration

While the movement of people has thought throughout history at various levels, modern immigration tourism are considered non-immigrants . Immigration that violates the immigration laws of the destination country is termed illegal immigration or undocumented immigration....
/emigration
Emigration

Emigration is the act of leaving one's native country or region to Settler in another. It is the same as immigration but from the perspective of the country of origin....
, foreign politics and national politics. Also, in complexity economics
Complexity economics

Complexity economics is the application of complexity science to the problems of economics. It is one of the four C's of a new paradigm surfacing in the field of economics....
, it has been found that horizontal inequality
Horizontal inequality

Horizontal inequality is the inequality ? economical, social or other ? that does not follow from a difference in an inherent quality such as intelligence, attractiveness or skills for people or profitability for corporations....
 arises in complex systems.

A counterexample to social equality was the social inequality of the medieval Europe, where a person's estate
Estates of the realm

The Estates of the realm were the broad divisions of society, usually distinguishing nobility, clergy, and commoners recognized in the Middle Ages and later in some parts of Europe....
, which was usually inherited, determined the legal and social rights the person had. For example, clergy could claim the benefit of clergy
Benefit of clergy

In England law, the benefit of clergy was originally a provision by which clergymen could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts and be tried instead under canon law....
 to receive a more lenient punishment for a crime. Likewise, women have historically been and still are in some countries formally denied access to higher education—even if they could pay the tuition. In 19th century Europe, women had to apply for an "exemption from gender" to enroll in a university, insofar they could do so.

In apartheid-era South Africa, both blacks and whites had formally access to healthcare and similar public services. However, the segregated healthcare arranged for blacks did not meet the same standards as those for whites. That is, there was enforced social inequality.

History of social equality in America


The colonists in New England and the other 13 colonies enjoyed more social equality than the people in England did. Although they believed that, they also believed that it was only natural to rank people higher than others, by using a social class.

The idea of social equality in the minds of the founding generation of America was a belief that the government had the responsibility to protect equal rights, not to provide equal things. However, with the spread of socialism in the 1930s, Americans began to accept new definitions of social equality including right to certain goods and services.

Criticism of socialist view of social equality


One concern about modern socialism is the taxpayer-subsidized access to equal things such as health care or education. The problem arises when individual chooses not to use the public service or good, but have to subsidize it nonetheless, thus creating a social imbalance in distribution of goods and services. An example of this is education. The western education systems often provides free public education to all citizens, but it does not provide compensation to those who choose alternative education methods (such as homeschooling or private schooling).