Editor's note
Michael Claytor knows a lot about the finances of governments. But few citizens know the importance of his knowledge. He spent years examining revenues and expenditures at the Indiana State Board of Accounts, but voters turned their backs on his expertise when he ran for State Auditor. Hear it all at the Who Gets What? podcast, available at mortonjohn.libsyn.com.
I’ve been reading Robert Shiller’s 2019 book, “Narrative Economics” which details, in simple English, how stories, fact or fiction, have influenced economic affairs. The tale of brokers jumping from Wall Street windows in response to the 1929 stock market collapse, engendered a bleak situation and panic. The Bitcoin mania of our times is based on endorsements by reputedly successful investors like Musk and Trump, first class story tellers.

It got me thinking of another phrase with much power and little reality, “All men are created equal.” It’s not true. We come into the world with different genetic endowments, taking our first breaths in vastly different environments, swaddled by dissimilar adults. In short, we are born Diverse.

No matter what the Trump or Brawny administrations, and their co-conspirators may wish to believe, Diversity is a fundamental condition of humanity. It is the basic reality of “identical” twins. Trump may declare that we bear no differentiation except that precisely stated on our birth certificates. The world knows differently.

Legislators bind themselves to those five words, “All men are created equal.” We see it with the failures of the recently completed General Assembly session. All Indiana families, despite an extreme range of income and differentiation by circumstances, are to have vouchers paid by the state for the education of their children. All income is to be taxed at the same flat rate.

Virtually, all children, despite the extreme range of their capabilities and interests, are to be subjected to the same set of educational aspirations. They are to be passed through a STEM cauldron and formed into marketable ingots.

Companies are exceptionally differentiated by what they do. But they too are seen today primarily through the prism of finance. They became commodities to be aggregated, shipped from place to place, homogenized, and traded. It’s Taco Bell shacked up with KFC and Pizza Hut in a nightmare of indigestion.

However, student athletes are now monetized by expectations of their differentiated performances.

Politicians may rail against diversity, but there never was a quest for equality or equity. Inclusion was a temporary awkwardness of commercials on TV. DEI offices were rarely of consequence to any in the upper reaches of institutions.

So why this war on Diversity? It is an example of the ignorance and indifference that plagues those with responsibilities they cannot manage. They can pander to the misinformed and malefactors who hide behind the shield of the Declaration of Independence.

Yet that shield is out of date. It was pseudo-religious and irrelevant when written in a nation that still supported slavery, the suppression of women, and the imposition of indignities on immigrants. To mandate no recognition of diversity is to deny our basic humanity. It’s very like Elon assigning his son a numeric name.
Morton J. Marcus is an economist formerly with the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. His column appears in Indiana newspapers, and his views can be followed his podcast.

© 2025 Morton J. Marcus

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