The point of any sensibly organized and responsible society (and political order) is NOT to make everyone equal, because that's impossible.

It is to ensure that everyone has equal protection under the law, equal civil rights, and equal opportunity to get an education, get a job, find housing, get medical care, etc. How they make use of those equal opportunities is entirely up to them, and that's where you will see that some do much better than others, because people are not equal in their talents, abilities, and motivations.

That's perfectly natural. You can have a socialist system where some will do far better than others, because they apply themselves to the opportunities around them far better than others.

You can also have a capitalist system where that happens.

And you can have a mixed system of capitalism and socialism where that happens.

I'm in favour of the latter.

It is an oft-repeated canard of the political Right that the Left wants to "make everyone equal". That is not true, it's never been true, and it simply cannot happen, because more motivated, determined, and capable people WILL do better and get farther in ANY system, regardless of whether it is leftist, rightist or centrist in nature.

The problem with the right wing movements that have arisen in the wake of the Reagan era is not that they encouraged competition. Genuine, honest competition is good. It is that they encouraged rampant corruption through de-regulation of lending institutions and they encouraged a rich corporate elite to run wild, commit fraud, and do completely irresponsible things to society just to enrich itself further...at the expense of the middle class and the public in general.

This was not just irresponsible. It was criminal. And we are seeing the results of that criminal behaviour all around us.

That was initiated by the political Right under Ronald Reagan...but does the political Left have clean hands? Hardly! The political Left has been playing ball with those same corporate elites since the 1980s...but is continually pretending not to. The large political parties have all been bought out long ago by the financial elites, regardless which side of the spectrum they pretend to be on.

Obama, supposedly an opponent of the Right, is using financial advisors who came straight from the corporate ranks of those who were responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown in the USA, which was a pyramid scheme that finally collapsed in on itself. I don't believe for a moment that Obama represents any real alternative to what preceded him. He just talks as if he did.