> It's the official ideology of capitalist countries, to think that were all equal in the eyes of the govt and if youre not on the same economic level it must be cause you're fundamentally different/flawed.
IMO good government (i.e. the government that I would want to live under) treats all citizens equally under the law, not because everyone is equally lucky or everyone who is poor is a terrible person or something but because it's not the government's business to do anything but enforce the law. Good government is not a caretaker and is not a bank. Communities should look after their needy members and give them a lift up, not the government. If our communities aren't tightly knit enough for that, then that's a different and IMO deeper problem.
The problem isn't that there is equality in the eyes of the law. The problem is what that means in practice.
A poor citizen has the right to use their money as they see fit. <spoiler>A poor citizen has the right to:
lobby, to fund think tanks, to advertise their interests, to sway research through funding, to fund the careers of politicians, to gift resources to local police departments, to fund ballot initiatives and referendums, to acquire media outlets, to fund documentary films, to buy bots online, to fund lawsuits against the corporations, to host fundraisers with high net-worth individuals.</spoiler>
How many poor people are able to do this? Very very very tiny amounts. These rights are nearly exclusively actionable by a certain class of people.
And you may argue about the philosophical implications of 'equality of opportunity' vs 'equality of outcome'. But the thing is this so called "neutral legal framework" leads to a monopoly of power by the rich, because the law pretends both of these kinds of people are the same.
The very framework is in negation of itself because it leads power in the hands of a few.
That is the true problem of this framework. And to suggest that the alternative must be "equality of outcome" is a false dichotomy. The "neutrality of the government" is more like "a broken clock is right twice a day" kind of thing.
The founding fathers were already aware of this, in fact I think they made the state in their own interests seeing as during the founding of the US the vast majority of Americans at the time were illiterate farmers/workers and/or slaves. In a very real sense the state was made for the rich by the rich, but with lingo that pretended it was for everyone.
This is why class politics is the most important aspect of politics in our lives. We live in class society where there are fundamental differences between classes of people. This difference is not strictly and categorically based on the amount of money they have, but on HOW they fund their lives which allows them to have extra rights. Effectively we can't afford all the rights. This is the classic "All animals are equals, but some animals are more equal than others".
IMO good government (i.e. the government that I would want to live under) treats all citizens equally under the law, not because everyone is equally lucky or everyone who is poor is a terrible person or something but because it's not the government's business to do anything but enforce the law. Good government is not a caretaker and is not a bank. Communities should look after their needy members and give them a lift up, not the government. If our communities aren't tightly knit enough for that, then that's a different and IMO deeper problem.