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This article provides information about the views of liberal thinkers on social inequality:
Liberal thinkers do not accept that inequality is inherent in society rather it is treated as socially constructed. Inequality is, therefore, liable to be addressed and removed. Since individuals are born free and equal, ideally the state ought to be run with the consent of those on whom its authority rests.
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The liberals, along with the conservatives, nurse a strong distaste for socialist egalitarianism. Both favour a system of free economic competition in which individual talent and enterprise are appropriately rewarded.
Rewards, according to them, should be equal because people strive with the same degree of skill and effort to provide for their material comforts. They dismiss the socialist ideal that individuals should be rewarded on the basis of need rather than merit as unjust. Neither the conservatives nor the liberals are prepared to sacrifice liberty for the sake of social equality. The liberal position on the question of inequality may be presented in the following words:
The liberal society cannot be an egalitarian society, since freedom includes the freedom to make headway or to fall back, and Liberals cannot agree to resist the energetic in the interest of the leisurely. On the contrary, we should try to ensure equality of opportunity, accepting the implication that some who seize opportunities will go further and further than those who do not.
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However, modern liberals share the necessity of maintaining some redistributive justice with the socialists. They concede that gross inequalities could impair the freedom of the people who are condemned to life of hardship and poverty. For this reason, they endorse a programme of social welfare. They acknowledge that the welfare of the people is actually a form of liberty was much as it liberates men from social conditions which narrow their choices and thwart their self-development.
Thus, according to them, some attempt by the government to create a more equal society may safeguard rather than undermine individual freedom. While addressing the question of inequality, the liberals seem to be in a dilemma since they want both individual freedom and some element of state control to ensure distributive justice, which in turn is taken as a precondition to liberty.