Alongside that you would need to give excellent nutrition and medicine to underprivileged children. I) Equality of opportunity would mean massive improvements in education to make poor districts equal to rich. I think if more people could be convinced that saying 'I wanted that promotion myself, and not getting it hurts' was socially acceptable we would have a lot fewer people saying the (somehow more widely allowed) 'I don't think that person deserved their promotion'. It's painful for many people to acknowledge that their delusions of adequacy are exactly that, and looking for a scapegoat is a natural if unacceptable response. Having said that, below the statistical level I have some tiny sympathy for those who argue this. At a statistical level using this argument is just a total failure to perceive objective reality. That's obvious bullshit, of course: promotions for women and PoC lag far behind men in basically every corporate environment, and hiring usually mirrors that. The theory being: you got into the firm (equality in opportunity) but how high up you get (outcomes) is on you. This particular argument is generally trotted out when you're talking about discrimination in the workplace, especially in promotion practices. I think the difference in outcomes they're talking about depends largely on the context. They're literally held captive by their lives. Which is why someone coming along and threatening to break up their routine, even if it would make their lives immeasurably better, is met with such vitriol. It's awful and dystopian to anyone watching from the outside, but for them it's enough.

Then on the weekends they watch football and drag their children to church, because that's their only real social outlet.

They develop a sort of Stockholm syndrome where they have to settle into a routine that cannot change ever. Even though they're woefully underpaid for the work they do, they're not in real trouble most of the time. Most poor conservatives live in rural areas where cost of living is cheap enough that their jobs can buy an okay house and a few paltry toys. A big part of this is 'just comfortable enough'.

Another word for you that isnt informal