UK Labour supporters admit it: taxes are to punish the rich, not to raise revenue
08 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in labour supply, liberalism, Public Choice, Rawls and Nozick, taxation Tags: envy, expressive voting, top tax rate
via Labour supporters admit it: taxes are to punish the rich, not to raise revenue – Telegraph Blogs and http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/what-motivates-the-left-envy-or-greed/
The application of John Rawls difference principle to New Zealand
07 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, income redistribution, politics - New Zealand, Rawls and Nozick Tags: difference principle, income distribution, John Rawls, Maori economic development, Pasifika economic development
An urban legend in New Zealand is that income inequality is going from bad to worse.
Since the mid 1990s to around 2011 there was a small net fall in New Zealand’s income inequality trend line in the graph for the Gini coefficient for the income distribution for New Zealand shows. inequality in New Zealand is similar to that in Australia, Ireland, Canada and Japan.
Source: Ministry of Social Development (2014)
Taxes and transfers have reduced inequality in New Zealand when measured by Gini coefficients, but the trend is been relatively stable for many years.
Source: Ministry of Social Development (2014)
Rawls pointed out that behind the veil of ignorance, people will agree to inequality as long as it is to everyone’s advantage. Rawls was attuned to the importance of incentives in a just and prosperous society. If unequal incomes are allowed, this might turn out to be to the advantage of everyone. Robert Nozick said that:
Political philosophers must now either work within Rawls’s theory or explain why not.
The groups that have been doing best in New Zealand have been Maori and Pasifika. In real terms, overall median household income rose 47% from 1994 to 2010; for Maori, this rise was 68%; for Pacific, 77%!
Source: Ministry of Social Development (2014)
The large improvements in Māori incomes since 1992 were based on rising Māori employment rates, fewer Māori on benefits or zero incomes, more Māori moving into higher paying jobs, and greater Māori educational attainment (Dixon and Maré 2007).
Maori unemployment reached a 20-year low of 8 per cent from 2005 to 2008. Labour force participation by Maori increased from 45% in the late 1980s to about 62% in the last few years.
Most of the remaining income disparities between Māori and non-Māori flow from differences in educational attainment and demographic and socio-economic characteristics including household composition (Chapple 2000; Maani 2004; Dixon and Maré 2007).
How much of the massive increases in incomes over the last 20 years spread throughout the entire community are you willing to give up for a little more equality? How much of your income will you donate to charity to lead the way?
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Inequality is in; discrimination is out for Next Generation Left
02 Jul 2014 1 Comment
in applied price theory, income redistribution, politics - USA, Public Choice, Rawls and Nozick Tags: discrimination, inequality, Leftover Left, poverty, The Progressive Left
Political philosophers have weird debates
02 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in liberalism, Rawls and Nozick Tags: distributive justice, G.A. Cohen, thought experiments
The debate with Robert Nozick over self-ownership got to the level of do we own our own eyes or are they open for harvest and redistribution to be blind. Two working eyes is a matter of genetic luck
G.A. Cohen in Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality says your right to your own body outweighs commonly used socialist principles that mandate redistribution. You are entitled to keep your eyes even if the fact that you have two working eyes is a matter of genetic luck and even if a blind person needs an eye more than you do. Good eyes are the winnings of the genetic lottery and yet
They do not immediately agree that, were eye transplants easy to achieve, it would then be acceptable for the state to conscribe potential eye donors into a lottery whose losers must yield an eye to beneficiaries who would other- wise be not one-eyed but blind.
Cohen then concluded that our real objection to an eye lottery in the actual world is not that it violates self-ownership but that people have a right to bodily integrity.
p.s. English moral philosopher, John Harris, does support a compulsory organ lottery
HT: David Gordon
Jon Elster and Robert Nozick on the economics of Karl Marx
29 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in Marxist economics, Rawls and Nozick Tags: Jon Elster, Karl Popper, Robert Nozick
Popper held that Marxism had been initially scientific: Karl Marx postulated a theory which was genuinely predictive.
When these predictions were not in fact borne out, the theory was saved from falsification by adding ad hoc hypotheses to explain away inconvenient facts. By this, a theory which was genuinely scientific became pseudo-scientific dogma.
Popper criticizes theorists like Marx who attempt to accumulate evidence that corroborates their theories and not looking for evidence that would demonstrate that their hypothesis is false.
Popper claimed that falsifiability was an essential feature of any useful scientific theory. If a theory cannot be falsified, neither it nor its predictions can be validated, for everything that happens is by definition consistent with the theory.
As Popper and Kuhn understood it, bold, risky hypotheses are at the heart of great advances in the sciences and scholarship generally.
Nozick’s view is that people are entitled only to what others are willing to give them as gifts or in economic exchange
28 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in Rawls and Nozick Tags: distributive justice, justice and acquisition, justice in exchange, Robert Nozick
Nozick was correct to point out that resources are not manna the fell magically from heaven where:
If things fell from heaven like manna, and no one had any special entitlement to any portion of it…
Resources have moral histories that count. Individuals who hold resources through the scattered efforts and transactions of innumerable individuals themselves and these individual efforts and separate transactions give them a moral claim over what they have created, created, acquired and exchanged:
In the non-manna-from-heaven world in which things have to be made or produced or transformed by people, there is no separate process of distribution for a theory of distributions to be a theory of…
According to Nozick there are three sets of rules of justice, defining:
- how things not previously possessed by anyone may be acquired;
- how possession may be transferred from one person to another; and
- what must be done to rectify injustices arising from violations of (1) and (2).
A distribution is just if it has arisen in accordance with these three sets of rules. What matters is the moral history of who has what.We cannot escape that because resources do not fall’s manner from heaven.
These resources came from somewhere and from whence they came they have a moral claim over them. That claim must be treated seriously.
There are individual exchanges, in which the parties do not usually care about desert or handicaps, but simply about what they get in exchange:
No centralized process judges people’s use of the opportunities they had; that is not what the process of social cooperation and exchange are for‘
When people freely to use their property as they choose, any income and wealth distribution advocated by socialist and egalitarian liberal will be undone. Attempts to enforce a particular distributional pattern or structure over time will necessarily involve forbidding individuals from using the fruits of their talents, abilities, and labour as they see fit. As Nozick puts it:
the socialist society would have to forbid capitalist acts between consenting adults
Rawls, Nozick and Gore Vidal on envy
25 Jun 2014 2 Comments
in Rawls and Nozick Tags: difference principle, distributive justice, envy, Gore Vidal, John Rawls, Richard Epstein, Robert Nozick
Nozick argues that one of the unchallenged assumptions made by egalitarians is that the have-nots resent the haves only to the extent that the haves possess power and wealth that were unearned. The envious man, if he cannot also possess a talent and success that someone else has prefers that the other not have it either. The envious man prefers neither have it if he does not have it.
An old Russian joke tells of a poor peasant whose better-off neighbour has just bought a cow. In his anguish, the peasant cries out to God for relief from his distress. When God replies and asks him what he wants him to do, the peasant replies “shoot the cow.”
Nozick said that what really rankles the have-nots is the haves who clearly earned their status and possessions:
It may injure one’s self-esteem and make one feel less worthy as a person to know of someone else who has accomplished more or risen higher.
Nozick said that proximity is a bigger factor in the creation of envy than just desert. Envy is local rather than global in its scope with your neighbour as the target of your envy is rather than far-off figures you don’t really know who may be far more wealthy and successful than the people you actually envy in your day to day lives:
Workers in a factory recently started by someone who was previously a worker will be constantly confronted with the following thoughts: ‘Why not me? Why am I only here?”
Whereas one can manage to ignore much more easily the knowledge that someone else has done more if one is not confronted daily with him.
The point, though sharper then, does not depend upon another’s deserving his superior ranking along some dimension. That there is someone else who is a good dancer will affect your estimate of how good you yourself are at dancing, even if you think that a large part of grace in dancing depends upon unearned natural assets.
These considerations make one somewhat sceptical of the chances of equalizing self-esteem and reducing envy by equalizing positions along that particular dimension upon which self-esteem is importantly based.
Knowing that another’s superior ranking along some dimension depends in part upon unearned natural assets does not soften this loss of self-esteem. These considerations made Nozick sceptical of the chances of equalizing self-esteem and reducing envy by equalizing positions along that particular dimension upon which self-esteem is importantly based.
Nozick said that a contraction of options through regulation, redistribution and other government mandates will only increase envy because it will inevitably result in fewer socially acceptable ways of demonstrating personal worth. With fewer options (i.e. less freedom), the perception of inequality and emotion of envy are likely to be more, not less pronounced. Nozick has point here: primitive societies were racked with envy and any good fortune good fortune has tainted by genuine luck from escaping harvest failures and disease.
Nozick said we should expand a person’s options through capitalism thereby making it more likely that he will find something that he does well and on which he can base his self-esteem. Nozick said we should expand a person’s options thereby making it more likely that he will find something that he does well and on which he can base his self-esteem.
Adam Smith wrote that matters of justice can only be resolved if people distance themselves from the grubby particulars their own positions in particular disputes. This view evolved into Rawls arguing that the justice of social institutions should be tested from behind a veil of ignorance where people are ignorant of their particular role in society and individual talents.
Rawls had no place for envy behind his veil of ignorance:
- Principles of justice should not be affected by individual inclinations, which are also mere accidents; and
- The parties behind the veil of ignorance should be concerned with their absolute level of primary social goods, not with their standing relative to others.
Rawls was nonetheless alive to the possibility is that:
The inequalities sanctioned by the difference principle may be so great as to arouse envy to a socially dangerous extent.
Rawls’ project was to outline a realistic utopia — a society that could really exist given actual human nature. Political philosophy must describe workable political arrangements that can gain support of real people as they are.
On envy, Rawls’ main fall-back was the background institutions (including a competitive economy) making it likely that excessive inequalities will not be the rule. He recognised that the income of the poorest, along with the whole of society, benefit from competition in a market economy. Richard Epstein explained how the market is important to distributive justice and social peace despite envy:
Strong competitive markets do not favour one individual over another. They work well to harness individual self-interest to generate massive amounts of wealth, widely distributed in society, through voluntary transactions. Behind the veil, rational people should the support of strong and transparent markets as their first order of business.
John Rawls in a nutshell
23 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in Rawls and Nozick Tags: difference principle, distributive justice
Would you rather be poor in a poor society or poor in a rich society?
In the four hypothetical economies A to D below, the difference principle selects Economy C because it is the income distribution where the least-advantaged group does best.
|
Economy |
Least-Advantaged Group |
Middle Group |
Most-Advantaged Group |
|
|
A |
10,000 |
10,000 |
10,000 |
|
|
B |
12,000 |
30,000 |
80,000 |
|
|
C |
30,000 |
90,000 |
150,000 |
|
|
D |
20,000 |
100,000 |
500,000 |
|
The inequalities in economy C are to everyone’s advantage relative to equal division (Economy A), and a more equal division (Economy B).
The difference principle does not allow the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor in Economy D.
Under the difference principle, a smaller share of a bigger pie might be better than an equal share of a smaller pie.
There is no good reason for the poor to shoot themselves in the foot by demanding equality, when inequality would serve them better. Robert Nozick said that:
Political philosophers must now either work within Rawls’s theory or explain why not.
Central to the difference principle is natural talents and endowments are undeserved because they are accidents of birth.
A citizen does not merit more of the social product simply because she was lucky enough to be born with gifts that are in great demand.
The fact that citizens have different talents and abilities can be used to make everyone better off.
In a society governed by the difference principle, those better endowed with talents are welcome to use their gifts to make themselves better off, so long as they also contribute to the good of those less well endowed.
“In justice as fairness,” Rawls says, “men agree to share one another’s fate.”
For Nozick, as long as economic inequalities arise from voluntary exchange, they cannot be unjust. Nozick was content to establish the rules of the game and let the legal moves by individual players determine social outcomes.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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