Equity as a bureaucratic metric
In the 2021 episode on the recall of Gavin Newsom, Bob Zadek frames equity as a soft, undefined standard that delayed California’s vaccination effort. He says Newsom was determined to distribute the virus in accordance with something other than law, namely a soft, undefined concept of equity, and asks how distribution got bogged down in the attempt to do it equitably. The Case for Recalling Gavin Newsom (2021)
Kevin Kiley responds that he is not sure what equity means, calling it one of those words that can mean the exact opposite of its most intuitive meaning. He says that in the vaccine rollout, in the name of equity, eligibility was defined so narrowly that too few people could claim available doses and doses were thrown out, and that California for a while ranked 50th out of 50 in the percent of doses administered. He identifies the operative instrument as the so-called Healthy Places Index, described as a grab bag of 25 characteristics assessed at the census tract level, including voter turnout in the last election, tree canopies, and alcohol availability — so that a neighborhood scores higher on equity if it has more bars. Kiley says this index feeds a formula determining vaccine priority and was added as a third metric to the state’s color-coded tier scheme, so that a region can be held back from advancing to a higher tier if it scores poorly. The Case for Recalling Gavin Newsom (2021)
Kiley extends the criticism to schooling and business closures, saying Newsom’s school shutdowns exacerbated achievement gaps and that children in underserved communities struggled most with distance learning, with some not logging into Zoom at all. He says the stock market did fine while workers were laid off by the millions, and that everything Newsom did during COVID-19 exploded existing inequality. He calls the use of equity as a buzzword perverse, especially when used as an alibi for incompetence. The Case for Recalling Gavin Newsom (2021)
Equity, equality, and income
In the 2021 episode with John Judis, Zadek asks what is wrong with income inequality per se, noting that people are born with different attributes and that inequality is a fact of human existence. He contrasts income inequality with health inequality, appearance inequality, and inequality from accident of birth. Is Socialism Still a Dirty Word? (2021)
Judis says he does not identify equality with complete leveling, and notes that sometimes people now use the word equity instead of equality. He frames the issue first as fairness, giving the example of someone who inherits millions and does not have to work versus someone born to modest circumstances without the opportunity to support a family decently. He cites the inheritance tax, which he says Andrew Carnegie championed, as a good idea in his view and an attempt to create equality by birth, and mentions college scholarships in the same connection. Is Socialism Still a Dirty Word? (2021)
Judis’s second issue is stability, which he ties to the economy as understood in the 1930s through John Maynard Keynes: radical inequality of income, as in the 1920s and again from the 1980s onward, produces too much saving, insufficient consumption, and recessions. His third issue is the disparity in the United States, where he says billionaires make more in a minute than he will make in a week or a year, and where CEO salaries went from roughly 16 times the average worker 50 years ago to about 160 times, though he cautions that his numbers are not exact. He says this fosters both economic instability and unfairness, and that what is wanted is some way of making things more equal — not equal with an equality sign, but more equal and fairer. Is Socialism Still a Dirty Word? (2021)
Equity as coerced outcomes
In the 2022 episode on Critical Race Theory, Jonathan Butcher defines equity as the coerced form of equal outcomes, as opposed to equality, which he says means everyone is treated the same way under the law regardless of skin color or ethnicity. Under equity, he says, Critical Race theorists hold that government should create systems providing the same outcomes for individuals. Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth (2022)
Butcher attributes this to Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, naming Kendi’s books How to Be an Antiracist and Stamped. He says Kendi writes that capitalism and racism are conjoined twins, and that Kendi argues racial discrimination is necessary because of past discrimination, present discrimination because of past discrimination, and future discrimination because of present discrimination — which Butcher presents as quotes from the book. Butcher says this combination is illogical: on one hand capitalism and racism are said to be conjoined twins that should be disrupted and destroyed, and on the other hand discrimination is said to be necessary. He adds that equity is why Critical Race theorists favor affirmative action, which they believe has not gone far enough, and why they call standardized tests inherently racist — a claim he attributes to Kendi — because the tests measure people’s behaviors and abilities. Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth (2022)
Equity as a term of art in schooling
In the 2021 episode on parents voting with their kids’ feet, Matt Welch describes equity as a term of art that sort of means equality among races and classes of people in the way that things are provided. He says he encountered a lot of crazy stuff while writing about and participating in policy-making in New York, particularly concerning equity, and that many parents discovered the same thing for the first time during the pandemic. Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021)
The surrounding discussion concerns school funding and enrollment. Welch says that in most jurisdictions, though not all, a big chunk of school budgeting is based on per-student counts, so losing students means losing funding, and that Washington sent close to $200 billion to K-12 for emergency coronavirus-related purposes over two years against a normal $40 billion a year. He says the money was sold as being for ventilation and mitigation but in practice went almost entirely to personnel, and that teachers unions have an outsized influence on school policies in Democratic-run polities. Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021)
Welch contrasts charter schools, which he notes are also public schools funded by government money but not run by governments and generally not unionized, with district schools. He says charters educate 10% of K-12 students in New York City, that the state imposes an artificial cap on the number of physical charter schools, and that charters were as closed as normal schools during the pandemic but were perceived by parents as handling remote learning better. Private schools, he says, were simply open — often across the street from public schools that were open twice a week or subject to hair-trigger closures — and California had the least open schools in the country. He notes that homeschooling doubled in the country, with Black families the biggest growth element. Parents Voting With Their Kids’ Feet (2021)
Equity in the Equity Funding scandal
The 2009 episode on insider trading supplies the article’s only use of “equity” as part of a proper name. Bob Zadek recounts the story of Ray Dirks, a stockbroker in the 1970s who received a call from a man named Secrest, an employee of a life insurance company called Equity Funding whose stock was rising. Secrest, angry about being shorted on his Christmas bonus, told Dirks the company was a fraud, that employees held insurance policy writing parties on weekends to write phony policies to satisfy regulators and auditors, and that it involved the Mafia, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Legalize Insider Trading (2009)
Zadek says Dirks investigated, confirmed the fraud, and approached the Wall Street Journal, which declined to go public on hearsay, and the SEC, which would not move. Dirks then told his institutional clients to sell Equity Funding; Zadek says Dirks made not a dime, the stock collapsed, and the president went to jail for about eight years. The SEC censured Dirks for sharing inside material non-public information, and he fought the censure to the US Supreme Court, where Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General argued against the SEC and the Court removed the censure ten years after it was imposed. Zadek says the story shows how out of control the vague body of law is, and Don Boudreaux says Dirks saved his clients from losses and helped expose the fraud earlier than it would otherwise have been exposed. Legalize Insider Trading (2009)
Equity and ownership in a public-choice frame
In the 2019 episode with Mike Munger, a caller named Dave describes being chief economist for an oil company over 30 years earlier, when he and the CEO penned an order requiring all people in the company to get the CEO’s permission to accept any government subsidy on any program or investment. Munger calls it a great example and says it is possible particularly for a small, closely-held company, because if the CEO or management group also controls a substantial part of the stock, it may be possible. Mike Munger is Taking Public Choice Seriously (2019)
Munger then says the genius of capitalism is to share broadly — literally share broadly — all the ownership of this equity, which he gives as the reason many large corporations are more susceptible. The excerpt breaks off mid-sentence at that point. Mike Munger is Taking Public Choice Seriously (2019)
Across episodes: no single development
The episodes do not trace a single argument about equity across time. The 2009 episode uses the word only inside the name Equity Funding; the 2019 episode uses it for stock ownership; the 2021 episodes treat it as a vaccine and tier metric (Kiley), as a substitute for equality in debates over income (Judis), and as a term of art in school policy (Welch); the 2022 episode treats it as coerced equal outcomes (Butcher). What changes is the domain of application, not a shared thesis, and no guest responds to another’s definition.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not supply a legal definition of equity, a statutory or constitutional basis for any equity metric, or the text of the Healthy Places Index. They do not state the outcome of the recall effort, the name of any bill, or the holding of any case beyond the Dirks censure. Several excerpts break off mid-sentence or mid-exchange, and nothing is offered here about what was said after those points.