In His Reply to Mark Reiff's Rawlsian Argument, John Gaski

Essay

In his reply to Mark Reiff's Rawlsian argument, John Gaski asserts:
Of course all humans are not perfectly equal in talent, information, or effort. A liberal government endeavors to enact equality before the law, but countless sources of natural inequality are present in any society. As a result, this Rawls/Reiff hypothetical does not apply to the real world.
What do you make of this claim? Is it true that "this Rawls/Reiff hypothetical" doesn't apply to the real world? How important is actual equality to the point Reiff is making? And more generally, what should we do when there's tension between our ideals and empirical realities?