ABSTRACT
In many obvious ways most contemporary societies involve considerable inequality. It seems evident that no one interpretation of 'equality' or 'egalitarianism' will necessarily serve every occasion. It may be said that egalitarianism is simply the last refuge of the envious and resentful. When people say they are in favour of equality, without further qualification, it is unlikely that they mean that in all matters they are consistently in favour of the same end result or the same distribution. John Plamenatz argues for equality of opportunity in the sense of people having 'as much chance as any other of living the kind of life that seems good' to them. It may be said that in any society there will be a standard view of what constitutes a minimally decent life, and one view would define this as 'a life which persons with average income can afford' so that 'anyone is poor whose income is substantially below the appropriately designated income'.
