General Presentation

Abstract

This chapter is a general summarised presentation of the problem of defining the best possible choice of the overall income distribution in macrojustice (as opposed to microjustice and mesojustice concerned with allocations directly of specific goods or in particular instances). The three classical polar principles advocate respectively self-ownership and transfers motivated by comparisons of individuals’ incomes and welfares. They are synthesised by people’s general ethical views in the society that has to implement the policy. Actual policies show the material possibilities (for instance the exemption of overtime labour earnings from the income tax that amounts to basing transfers on capacities). The result is a simple and richly meaningful distributive structure that means, jointly, equal real liberty; adding an egalitarian and a classical liberal parts of income; reciprocity by providing each other with the product of the same labour; and an equal basic income financed by an equal partial labour of each. This core principle is then applied taking all the actual economic and social phenomena into account. The questions this may raise are analysed and answered in the various chapters of this volume.