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Equality: ‘Fact’ or ‘Value’?

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Abstract

He would cut up the ceilings of the Veronese into strips so that every one might have a little piece. I don’t want everyone to have a little piece of anything, and I have a great horror of that kind of invidious jealousy which is at the bottom of the idea of a redistribution.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Penguin Classics edition, 1987:396/7.

  2. 2.

    These include books by Atkinson, A.B.; Deaton, A.; Marmot, M.; Wilkinson, R., and Pickett, K.; Piketty, T., Reich, R.B.; Stiglitz, J.; and reports by the OECD and the World Bank.

  3. 3.

    Piketty, 2014.

  4. 4.

    OECD, 2014.

  5. 5.

    Wildaum and Mitchell, Financial Times, 14 January, 2016.

  6. 6.

    Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth [RCDIW] 1979, [Cmnd. 7595]:17. The World Top Incomes Database estimates suggest that the post-tax income share of the top 1% in the UK fell from around 12% in 1945 to just over 8% in 1960.

  7. 7.

    Atkinson, Piketty and Saez, 2011: 41, Figure 8.

  8. 8.

    Using Luxembourg Income Survey (LIS) data for 17 industrialised countries, Harkness (2010) has explored in detail the link between female participation and inequality, while Sobhee (2011) has demonstrated the importance of changes in female employment in a variety of developing countries in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

  9. 9.

    Atkinson, 2015:66.

  10. 10.

    Atkinson, 2015:82, Figure 2.7.

  11. 11.

    OECD, 2012:3.

  12. 12.

    Financial Times, 26 January, 2016.

  13. 13.

    Mishel, Gould and Bivens [EPI] 2015: Figures 2 and 8

  14. 14.

    Mishel et al., ibid. : Figure 7.

  15. 15.

    Mishel et al., ibid. : Figure 1.

  16. 16.

    Atkinson, 2015:24.

  17. 17.

    Jarowsky, Financial Times, August 7th, 2015.

  18. 18.

    Atkinson, ibid .

  19. 19.

    Atkinson, ibid. : Figure 1.4.

  20. 20.

    OECD, 2012:10.

  21. 21.

    http://www.oecd.org/social/in-it-together-why-less-inequality-benefits-all-9789264235120-en.htm

  22. 22.

    Ostry et al., 2014.

  23. 23.

    Stiglitz, 2012 and 2015.

  24. 24.

    Reich, 2015.

  25. 25.

    Marmot, 2004 and 2015.

  26. 26.

    Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009 and 2011.

  27. 27.

    Wolf, M., Financial Times, 26 September 2007:15.

  28. 28.

    Rawls, 1971:142.

  29. 29.

    Rawls,1993. The principles as set out in 2001 [in Political Liberalism] and reproduced here differ slightly from those originally set out in 1971, p2. 50, but it would be out of place here – and irrelevant to the main argument – to embark on an analysis of the differences.

  30. 30.

    This was, of course, implicit in his earlier 1971 formulation which required that social and economic inequalities be ‘reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage’ (1971:60) and was made explicit at numerous points in the book, such as ‘…the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society’ (loc. cit:75).

  31. 31.

    For example, Rawls,1971:440.

  32. 32.

    Nozick,1989:17.

  33. 33.

    Kymlicka., 2002:108.

  34. 34.

    Nozick, 1974:160.

  35. 35.

    de Jasay, 2010a:8. See also his provocative dissection of the concept of ‘rights’ in de Jasay, 2010b.

  36. 36.

    Parfit,1991:17–18 and passim.

  37. 37.

    This corresponds to what Broome calls ‘the principal of personal good’ in Broome, 1991:ch.8.

  38. 38.

    Temkin, 1993:248.

  39. 39.

    Frankfurt, 1997. See also a much later re-statement of his views in Frankfurt, 2015.

  40. 40.

    Raz, 1986:240.

  41. 41.

    On prioritarianism, see also Parfit, 1991; Broome,1991; Fleurbaey, 2006.

  42. 42.

    Nagel, 1979:116–117.

  43. 43.

    Strictly speaking, one ought to distinguish between three concepts, namely (i) being the worst off; (ii) having greatest needs; and (iii) deriving the most benefit from redistributive policies. But for purposes of the point made here it is assumed that all three are sufficiently closely correlated.

  44. 44.

    See e.g. Parfit, 1991:22; Brighouse and Swift, 2006:fn.2

  45. 45.

    Before the concept of ‘prioritarianism’ came into widespread use it was discussed by Broome as an ‘additively separable utility function’, in Broome, 1991:179ff.

  46. 46.

    For example, as shown in Broome, 1991:185; or Brown, Campbell, 2005.

  47. 47.

    Crisp, 2003: 757.

  48. 48.

    See also Arneson, 2000.

  49. 49.

    Atkinson, 2015:9.

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Beckerman, W. (2017). Equality: ‘Fact’ or ‘Value’?. In: Economics as Applied Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50319-6_15

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