Even in adult life, there has to be some equality of outcome. It is well known that, once someone has been unemployed for a long time, it becomes extremely difficult for that person to get back into the labour market. But whether someone loses her job is not entirely determined by the person’s ‘worth’. For example, many people lose their jobs because they chose to join an industry that looked like a good prospect when they first started but since hasbeen hit hard by a sudden increase in foreign competition. Few American steelworkers or British shipbuilding workers who joined their industries in the 1960s, or for that matter anyone else, could have predicted that by the early 1990s their industries would be virtually wiped out by Japanese and Korean competition. Is it really fair that these people have to suffer disproportionately and be consigned to the scrapheap of history?