Hobbes Locke Rousseau Aristotle Marx Rawls Nozick

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Nozick

Monday, November 15, 2010

Economic Equality

Arguments for Socialism and Redistribution


John Rawls (1921-2002)

• Justice as Fairness

• Principles of social justice are those that

• Free

• Rational

• Self-interested

• Equal

• persons would accept to govern their association


Original Position

• Knowledge: know relevant facts about society, economics, politics, etc.

• Veil of ignorance: no one knows place in society, natural abilities, propensities, conception of the good

• Fairness: all equal; no contingencies affect choice (Kant)


Choice of Principles

• Ensure that everyone cooperates; everyone must benefit from arrangement (Rousseau)

• Reflective equilibrium: test principles against intuitions, adjust one or the other, try again


Principles of justice

• 1. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.

• Maximal equal liberty

• Basic liberties are those of citizenship:

• Political activity, Speech, Thought, Property, Rule of law


Principles of justice

• 2. Social and economic inequalities must be arranged so that they are

• Difference principle: Reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage

• Equal opportunity: Attached to positions and offices open to all


Injustice

• Injustice = inequalities not to the benefit of all

• But there’s nothing wrong with A having more if it doesn’t harm B

• Really, injustice = inequalities that harm the least advantaged


Injustice

• Imagine an equal distribution

• What could make me willing to tolerate inequality?

• Nothing, if I’m harmed


Judging Distributions

• Rawls (Maximin): choose that with the highest minimum point

• Utilitarianism: choose that with the greatest area

• Marx: choose that which matches distribution of needs

• Rousseau: choose that with greatest area that stays within limits

• Safety net: choose that with greatest area that stays above lower limit

welfare

Less <–––––––––––––––––> More

Rich

Poor


Arguments for Welfare Programs

• The more fortunate have an obligation to help the less fortunate

• Aristotle: generosity

• Kant: charity

• Mill: generosity maximizes happiness; the happiness of others as just as important as your own


Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)


• The originative part of America, the part of America that makes new enterprises, the part into which the ambitious and gifted workingman makes his way up, the class that saves, that plans, that organizes, that presently spreads its enterprises until they have a national scope and character,—that middle class is being more and more squeezed out by the processes which we have been taught to call processes of prosperity. Its members are sharing prosperity, no doubt; but what alarms me is that they are not originating prosperity.

Disappearing Middle Class


• Holism: Individual has value only in the context of the State

• Positive Liberty: Liberty is coordination with the State

Positive Liberty


• I have long had an image in my mind of what constitutes liberty. Suppose that I were building a great piece of powerful machinery, and suppose that I should so awkwardly and unskilfully assemble the parts of it that every time one part tried to move it would be interfered with by the others, and the whole thing would buckle up and be checked. Liberty for the several parts would consist in the best possible assembling and adjustment of them all, would it not?

Cog in the Machine


• Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human interests and human activities and human energies.

Positive Freedom


Substantive positive rights

• Substantive rights pertain to outcomes: Entitlements

• New Deal (Roosevelt): “The duty of the State toward the citizen is the duty of the servant to its master. . . . One of these duties of the State is that of caring for those of its citizens who find themselves the victims of such adverse circumstances as make them unable to obtain even the necessities for mere existence without the aid of others. . . .”


Substantive positive rights

• “To these unfortunate citizens aid must be extended by governments, not as a matter of charity but as a matter of social duty.”

• “[No one should go] unfed, unclothed, or unsheltered.”

• For FDR, our duties to feed, clothe, and shelter others are perfect: not like charity, but matters of social justice


Substantive Positive Rights

• Alleged examples: People are entitled to:

– Housing: others must enable you to have housing

– Health care: others must enable you to have health care

– Employment: others must enable you to have a job

– Food: others must enable you to have food


Social Security


Medicare


Medicaid


Welfare Programs


Housing Programs


Poverty

• Poverty is widespread; much of the world’s population is poor

• Wealth is highly concentrated, even in advanced societies

• 16% of US children are poor


Wealth in the US

• % households net worth % net worth

• Top 1% > $2.7M 35%

• Top 10% > $400K 68%

• Bottom 46% < $ 50K 3%

• Bottom 25% < $ 10K 1%


Poverty

• % households income cutoff % income

• Top 5% $132,199 21%

• Top 20% $101,300 49%

• Second 20% $ 75,000 23%

• Middle 20% $ 38,885 15%

• Fourth 20% $ 16,116 9%

• Bottom 20% $ 9,200 4%


Inequality


Inequality• Inequality is increasing, and has been since 1967


Rousseau and Rawls

• Rousseau: tolerate neither rich men nor beggars

• Rawls: maximize the welfare of the least advantaged

• Social instability: those with little have little stake in the social contract, and have incentives to rebel against it

• Legitimacy: those with little have little reason to consent to social contract. But that’s what justifies government’s authority over them


Marx and Walzer

• Society is organized for the mutual benefit of its members

• From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs

• People’s needs ought to be met in a just society

• People have a positive right to have their needs met


Equality (Nielsen)

• Equality of life prospects is a fundamental good

• Moral equality— equality of treatment— is a right

• Equality of treatment requires at least a rough equality of condition

• Without equality of condition,• People have different life prospects• Some have power over others• Undermining their self-respect


Dworkin’s Liberalism

• People have a right to equal treatment

• Government must be neutral on what constitutes the good life

• Hayek: This justifies a market economy— anything else substitutes the government’s evaluation of goods for those of the people

• But it also justifies intervention, to limit effects of unjust or irrelevant factors: discrimination, advantages, luck, talent, intelligence


Three Levels of Aid

• Safety net: meet basic needs (food, clothing, shelter, medical care)

• Ongoing

• Temporarily (with a time limit)

• Liberal equality: also, enable poor to improve their own condition (child care, education, nutrition)

• Difference principle: also, improve condition as much as possible without causing harm to poor


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Hobbes Locke Rousseau Aristotle Marx Rawls Nozick