Why fair just ain't

Barack Obama is about to outline his plan for a fairer America.This comment alone should tell us all we need to know. Any principles the man once had have been consigned to the bin, and his pockets filled instead with vote-catching slogans designed to woo the moronic majority to his cause in the next election.

Fairness as a concept is about creating a level playing field; it really only works if starting from scratch - it's why sports are governed by rules. At the start of the game, both teams have the same number of players, and play by the same rules. That's fair.

But where it falls down is that someone wins, and in the eyes of Obama, most western politicians and the entire populace of those who earn less than the national average, having winners is not fair.

So the fair Obama et al refer to means penalising winners to improve the lot of the losers. It's as if Man Utd thrash Wigan 7-1 but the FA say "look, United, that's not fair - we are going to penalise you three goals and redistribute them to Wigan so it is actually a 4-4 draw"

Bonkers it may be, but that is the reality of this 21st century concept of fairness. And it's one that Politicians will cling to if it gets them re-elected.

Ironically the unfairness is a creation of these same politicians, who have allowed laws and their legal interpretations to manifestly stack the odds in favour of the rich.

The more you earn, the less tax you pay is now a global game. Had the politicians created a regulatory environment which was not open to such widespread and mandatory abuse, then the hitherto unseen levels of jealousy which have manifested themselves into 21c fairness might not exist.

But having opened the rabbit hutch, it is not fair to punish the rabbit. Punishing the successful in order to appease and enfranchise the unsuccessful will simply disenfranchise the successful. They will go elsewhere, where their contributions are appreciated. And governing a country of losers will very quickly lose it's appeal; only third raters would be attracted to politics in such an environment.

Whilst many would argue that having third raters in power would be a vast improvement on the current incumbents, it still falls short of the ideal.

Fair is not a fact, it is a perception. Only if a state of perceived fairness gained absolute endorsement could it be deemed to be genuinely and all-encompassingly fair.

And that just ain't going to happen. Because life is, and will always be about winners and losers - that's humanity for you, and losers don't like being losers, you see, because it's just not fair!