Cato on inequality

One has to look at the variance, but also at the mean. I take it conservatives claim that a wider variance allows a higher mean and hence a smaller population at the bad end of the spectrum. So they would in fact care about inequality and the unfortunate, just in a second-order way, which if it’s right is right.

“Everyone cares about inequality.”

What this means is that, in our political discourse, concern for equality has been institutionalized. In order to participate in political life, you must in some sense favor equality. Those who believe in a stratified society of the Indian, feudal European, or Old South type have to conceal their real opinions. (George Will is interesting ion this respect, because he doesn’t always try too hard).

Equality thus become an “essentially-contested concept” — you just argue about what the word really means, while agreeing that it’s a very good thing.

“Upward mobility” is a common proxy for equality. Logically, it can’t be a solution to the problem of inequality — if everyone moves up, relative positions are the same, but if only the bottom half moves up, that leaves no one to drive trucks and work in warehouses and mills. (Solution: immigrants.)

And everyone wants either fairness or affirmative action for those down below, but very few of those with any resources are willing to throw their children out on their own resources, with the same chance as the average person. (And of course, for there to be upward mobility, you really need maximum parental support to their kids’ success.)

Hi Chris, Thanks for the link, and thanks for jumping into the conversation. Which is, by the way the point of Cato Unbound — to provoke conversation, and thereby promote better understanding, about important, potentially controversial topics such as, say, inequality. We’re glad you advanced our goal by registering your objections to some of Dave’s points.

Substantively, let me jump in. You say:

taken together his two paragraphs suggest that he feels no qualms that the real ex ante chances of some children at achieving the nth position in society are much less than the real ex ante chances of others, through no fault of their own. That nth position is likely to be (contingently) associated with reward, with the possibility of comparatively pleasant and stimulating labour, with social prestige and with longer life expectancy and lower risk of disease. And, of course, much of that shortfall in opportunity to compete for that position is systematically correlated with a child’s class membership or racial background. And that inequality matters, and it matters because it is unjust.

I think you’ll really find Dave’s new book challenging and worthwhile. I think he addresses a lot of what you’re getting at here.

I don’t understand the motivation for pounding the table and insisting, despite what Dave has argued, on the idea of “competing” for the nth position. Do you disagree with Dave’s contention that society is not a race, a but a cooperative productive endeavor?

If some people are unable to participate fully in that joint endeavor, they will likely end up with less than people who can participate fully. But the problem isn’t getting less (falling short of the nth position), it’s the inability to contribute fully and get enough. We need to help those people get a solid footing, so that they can have a good life. Right? If their footing is so unsure that they will suffer ennervating work, bad health, etc., then it is not good enough. But the problem then is not inequality.

Or is your contention that inquality in position, as such, is an evil, such that, for example, if the middle of the bottom income decile was a million per year, and the middle of the top was a trillion, then the harm and indignity of the millionaires at the bottom flowing simply from the fact of the giant gap would itself count as an injustice? Are you saying that there simply is no “good enough” bottom as long as the distance from the top is too big?

Re will at #6 which we crossposted – this is why I support a full-blown effort to bring quality nutrition, health care, and schooling to every damn kid in the US (preferably the entire planet) regardless of their parents income, location, even if that income is drug-dealing and their location is usually in jail. It ain’t the kids fault, and there are some real gems out there that we’re missing.

Once they reach adulthood they should also have basic healthcare available, safe streets and plenty of public transportation so that nobody needs to take on the albatross of the auto to make a living. Oh yeah, and they don’t have to live next to a toxic-fume spewing monstrosity.

But that’s euro-weeny-socialism, and we can’t have that. So I suspect this whole thing is going to be “let them eat cake” rather than actually sitting down and giving a definition of “equality” that the public sector can truly work with and communicate to the voters, a definition that doesn’t care who has the plasma TV and the jacuzzi and who doesn’t.

Because anything that really would make sense will require taxpayer money, and nobody at Cato will ever accept that.

Worse, it’s goes against neo-liberalism that you can measure anything in any other way than money, so the Blairist-style “left” won’t be able to get it, either.

-a different chris,

When you differentiate b/w the rich kid and the basketball player by talking about raising level of play, you’re using an ends-justified analysis. But this doesn’t point to a fundamental injustice in inequality.

So if we could improve outcomes for inner-city kids, but only by spending large amounts of money, what has been shown? If your argument is ends-based then you still have to go the extra step to show that the benefit outweighs the cost. On the other hand, I think there is a fundamental value to equality, but it does compete with other political values.

John Emerson- you bring up an interesting point about immigration. And I’m curious, how would you feel about a society that sustained itself on low-income immigrant labor with substantial inter-generational mobility out of the lowest income class? Not that the United States is a good example, but is that a bad thing to aspire to? And if not, what about in particular is objectionable about it?

Inequality is not primarily about consumption, it is about power. The main thing a rich person does with his money is to control other people- directly, as employees, or indirectly, through his purchasing power. If you think a society of fawning servants scraping obsequieously before a handful of smug plutocrats is a great way to live, then inequality doesn’t matter.

The present state of inequality was presided over by Clinton, who did not care about inequality as long as the rising tide lifted all boats. His legacy was an entrenched elite that cares only about itself and controls all the levers of power in our society – the press, the political parties, the courts. It is now impossible for Americans to learn the truth about what is happening in the country, because all the avenues of information are controlled by people in thrall to wealth- either directly, by virtue of working for corporate interests, or indirectly, by being under the control of the political party that is controlled by those interests. Look at New Orleans and tell yourself inequality doesn’t matter.

Equality is a red herring, equality is not the issue here. The issue is thievery.

In the capitalist system there are workers and capitalists. Capitalists are needed to drive up productivity of labor, that’s their only function. Productivity goes up, additional stuff gets produced, workers get more stuff and capitalists get more stuff, everyone is relatively happy – inequality is a flaw, but not the fatal flaw. That’s the theory.

Well, in practice during the past 30 years the capitalists have ripped off all 100% of all the additional stuff produced – or very close to it. That’s thievery, pure and simple. Why should the workers agree to play this game? They won’t; the system will have to change or collapse.

Mpowell: Past American immigration was a good thing, but the most recent wave of immigrants, mostly “illegals”, has coincided with a degradation of the status of labor generally, and there are a multitude of reasons why the descendants of the immigrants (now coming in at the bottom) will stay at the bottom:

weakening public support for education at all levels, a weakening minimum wage, weakening labor protections, fewer full-time permanent jobs and more part-time temp jobs, various anti-immigrant legal proposals, certain pro-immigrant proposals awarding second-class status, and finally the unofficial toleration of illegal workers **just because** they don’t have any rights.

While I’m more or less on board with the positon Chris sketches here, I’ll second Will w/r/t Schmidtz’s new book on justice which (about half way through) is wonderfully articulate, clear and rich (not to mention maddening).

Quick question, to those more familiar with the nuances of philosophical literature than I am: Have any of the Cato-mites ever dealt straightforwardly with the simple proofs that e.g. racial or sexual discrimination can produce persistent, economically rational, inequality? The trivial argument that discrimination is supposedly economically irrational, therefore [fill in the blank], is seen in many popular discussions. I was surprised to see Lawrence Summers making it in his infamous remarks. But is it taken seriously at the more “academic” levels of these sorts of forums?

Has anyone read Michael Marmot’s book, The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity?

He says that inequalities, even subtle inequalities, of many different kinds-income, education, social standing, etc. all have real, measurable effects.

If this is true, then it seems to present us with fundamental questions about the kind of social world we want to construct.

Dale,
we make use of the Marmot findings in our paper, though I notice that Chris Jencks is giving a talk in Madison in a couple months wit a title that suggests he disagrees with Marmot. Too little time now, but if you search “Michael Marmot” on this site you’ll turn up a couple of discussions.

Glen Loury’s The Anatomy of Racial Inequality is very good on the issues about discrimination and eminently readable. I just finished it, and half-promise a little post on it soon.

rilkefan (#2) wrote: One has to look at the variance, but also at the mean. I take it conservatives claim that a wider variance allows a higher mean and hence a smaller population at the bad end of the spectrum.

For this view to make sense, I think you have to focus on the median or some other quantile, not the mean. It’s easy to imagine 2 distributions with the same median but onw having a higher variance than the other. For example, start with a typical bell curve, not a good description of income or wealth distribution, but one that most are familiar with. With your left hand, grab it right at the top. With your right hand, grab the right tail. Now, hold tight with your left hand, so that what you are about to do with your right hand does not have any impact on the lower half of the distribution. With your right hand, pull the right tail further and further to the right.

You have just increased the variance, and the mean, without having any effect on (those in) the left hand side of the distribution. The only impact has been to make the rich even richer than they were. They can now lord it over the rest of society even more than before, so despite the increase in the mean, one could plausibly argue that at least half are worse off than before, certainly relatively if not absolutely. It depends on whether you think that there are things in society other than absolute wealth that influence well-being, for instance relative influence and power.

What’s happened in the US in the last generation has been more akin to starting with an already asymmetric distribution, grasping it with the left hand at roughly the 90th percentile and with the right at the right tail, and conducting the exercise described above.

SH makes an interesting point above; an important measure of equality is temporal equality.

Before we all condemn the current american regulatory capitalist state, it’s worth recognizing that middle class ($40K /yr?) are far wealthier, in many respects, than any prior generation. They have access to unadulterated healthy food, clean water, health care and recreational opportunties, from travel to DVDs, that no middle class has ever had before.

That said, it certainly appears to me that a major change for the middle class in recent years, not shared by those above, is the increase in instability. Freedom from fear is an important freedom. Yet job losses, pension losses, and loss of access to health care are all on the rise for the middle class.

I’m an attorney, not a statistician. Perhaps my perception of stability for the post-war middle class is just a perception, not supported by the data. But it certainly appears to me that one of the great inequalities in our society is the degree to which the very rich have captured the vast majority of new wealth our society is creating, and thereby insulating themselves from the lack of certainty and stability that the rest of us have.

As someone mentionned above, whenever one speaks of equality, one must specify equality of what (and also how much equality is sufficient, as opposed to a very vague “more equality”).

But, if the goal realtes to “the real ex ante chances of some children at achieving the nth position in society” then I would expect people in favour of equality to want the vast majority of equality promoting programmes to be concentrated in the early years (which could most broadly extend to 20 years) with comparatively few adult life compensation for the imperfect effectiveness of early life equality programmes.

But I very seldom hear such proposals. Instead, it seems like equality of opportunity is so broadly defined that it’s really a fig leaf for equality of outcome.

7 – a different chris. You state that being successful because you are a rich kid adds nothing to the level of play. Surely that depends on how the rick kids get to be successful?

Let’s consider the military. In 18th century UK, a rich man could simply buy his son a high rank in the army. This obviously does not raise the level of play.

Nowadays, if a rich man was for some reason determined to get his son a high rank in the army, the way would be to hire physical trainers for the son, hire tutors in reading, writing, arithmetic, military strategy, logistics, personal skills, martial arts, set up situations where the son can learn leadership skills, etc. Consequently the Army would have a higher probabiltiy of getting a good officer.

The same approach applies if rich parents are getting their children into top colleges because they spend large amounts on extra tuition, developing leadership skills, etc. If I have a top-notch mechanic because her father collected sports and classic cars so she had far more opportunity to play around with engines, then I am better off.

abb1 wrote, In the capitalist system there are workers and capitalists.

Nope. There are workers, capitalists, and landowners.

Well, in practice during the past 30 years the capitalists have ripped off all 100% of all the additional stuff produced – or very close to it.

Nah. The big thieves are the landowners.

“Are you sure you would still hold it were you in the bottom 2%? If not, would you agree that it cannot be a fair one?”

Am I SURE? No. But I think the veil of ignorance doesn’t prove as much as people think. It is not at all obvious that a theoretical system which works very well for 90%+ should be screwed up to (hopefully) make things ‘better’ for the bottom 2%. And not even better, but ‘better’ in the sense of more equal. That is especially true if they are having material needs met which would be the envy of many poor in the world today or even the middle class of 200 years ago.

Of course the problem is that it IS NOT 2% that the system fails. The number is larger than that. Or have you missed the numbers on how many live below the poverty line in the U.S.? Keep in mind that the Cato Institute, where this thread started, thinks that they should live there without any government aid.

As far as Glen Reynolds’ book proving something about his opinion on inequality, his Davids have to have the bucks for decent internet access, the education to take advantage of it and the belief that they can make a difference in society don’t they? That’s a floor of which all too many fall between the cracks. Heck, it’s virtual canyons, not cracks if you look at the real numbers.

I don’t see the connection. Having an inherent genetic gift for something means your involvement raises the “level of play” in that particular field. Being there because you have rich parents does not.

So inheriting genetic traits from your parents is “fair” but inheriting money is not? The connection is that some people are lucky enough to be born into advantageous circumstances…whether genetically or financially is irrelevant.

And you are, of course, assuming that any genetic traits that may have enabled the parents to become rich have not been passed on to the child.

There’s a new documentary out that oughta throw conservatives into a Moebius strip-style loop. Apparently there is a school that takes inner-city kids from Baltimore to somewhere in Africa, where they are subjected to some serious, if not discipline then let’s say high standards.

And why exactly is it that schools cannot impose high standards in Baltimore? Why does imposing high standards involve shipping the kids off to Africa? Oh…I bet the NEA doesn’t hold sway over education in Africa does it? I guess I answered my own question. When a school system can’t even hold teachers to minimal standards without being sued by the union, why would anyone expect to be able to hold students to standards?

@Sebastian,
I am not summoning an abstract veil of ignorance, I am considering a very well-known situation. I, for one, wouldn’t want to live the life of the bottom 2% (or probably even bottom 15-20%) of the US (where I reckon you live) or France (my home country). Now it might be true that I would still be richer than the majority of the world population but I believe that this is absolutely not an argument. Presumably, you are in favor of freedom of speech. Suppose suddenly your government should say “starting today, free speech is ok except when it comes to the national economy.” Well, you would still be having much more freedom of speech than the majority of the world population and yet I suspect you would not be too happy. Besides, an important hypothesis in your argument seems to be that the “system works very well for 90%” of the population. Well, as I have pointed out earlier, this is not what 90% of the population seems to think (in the case of the US, but other countries would probaby yield comparable figures).

But back on topic. Do you Sebastian agree with the idea that members of an exaggeratedly unequal society are liable to cease to see themselves as part of the same society (please note than I am note restricting myself to income inequalities, cultural ones, as in say access to education, are part of my rationale)? Do you agree that considering oneself part of a common society is an important condition for a functioning democracy? I am not saying that these are obvious ideas, I am just wondering if you would agree with them.

I googled “William Graham Sumner’s famous question” and came up with nowt. Could you amplify please..

Sebastian:

“And if you want to try to deal with some of the things on the extreme margins you should never do so without paying very close attention to how it changes the way the huge working part of the system operates.”

As has been pointed out above, the current system has given declining/stagnant real wages for the bottom *half* of the work force (with the exception of a few years during our Long Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity under Clinton). That’s not the ‘extreme margin’. And the liberal PoV sees that things can be changed to help that, without screwing things up (see ‘Great Keynsian Boom, 1945-1973, the height of liberalism in the USA).

As to why inequality matters, I’d say that it matters because (at least in some dimensions of what matters) inequality is unjust.

With due respect, Mr. Bertram, you didn’t give any reasons for this judgment in the first place. In order to give reasons, you would have to define “inequality” and “unjust,” to begin with.

I.e., do you mean that all differences in material equality are unjust? That can’t possibly be right. It’s unjust for the 60-year-old who has saved regularly for the past 40 years to have more money than the 25-year-old who just started working after graduate school?
That conclusion would be absurd.

So one has to modify your simplistic assertion that “inequality = unjust” by referring “inequality as between people who are otherwise equally situated in life.” Or something like that. But there’s the rub: What counts as “equally situated”? Is it unjust that one person who works hard ends up making more money than a person who deliberately chooses a lower-paying career (in order to have more time with his family)? Is it unjust that the diligent often (mirabile dictu) earn more money than the lazy? Unjust how?

And are you talking about equality of outcome here? There will never be equality of outcome no matter how much you jigger the system. Even if you could magically redistribute all of society’s resources today — such that all people had exactly the same resources in every respect — society would become inequal within a week’s time. Some people would have already blown all the money on gambling or stupid investments or travel or whatnot. And over time, the inequality would increase: some people work harder than others; some people save and invest while others spend all their money on alcohol and flashy cars; some people choose to go to become heart surgeons while others choose lower-paying careers.

Sure, inequality CAN be unjust — and it no doubt is in many situations. But the opposite is true as well: Absolute equality would be unjust as well, because it could not conceivably be achieved without regularly and forcibly taking money away from people who legitimately deserve it and giving it to others.

Or are you referring to equality of opportunity? I.e., that any child born anywhere should have an equal shot at [fill in the blank here]. If so, then a lot of this inequality isn’t even imaginably a matter of justice or injustice. For one thing, people are born with different genetic endowments. To take an extreme example, is it unjust that a given person is born with Down’s Syndrome? Bad luck, sure, but unjust?

Sebastian, can we dub the final argument in your comment the “Paris Hilton” argument? I’d love to use it as a starting point sometime, and promise to attribute accurately (unless you’d prefer to remain anonymous!). :)

A similarly structured argument:

Person A: George Bush is a fool.

Person B: George Bush is not a fool.

Person A: Prove it!

Steve

“Sebastian, can we dub the final argument in your comment the “Paris Hilton” argument? I’d love to use it as a starting point sometime, and promise to attribute accurately (unless you’d prefer to remain anonymous!).”

Sure and if I regret it later that will only encourage me to be more careful about writing. :)

SING high Cs.

“But you are just wrong about the historical vanity about attempting change. In the past 30 years the right has successfully changed the level of inequality in the US through conscious and deliberate policy reform, to make it much more unequal and unjust than it was 30 years ago.”

That isn’t what I said. I said: “You want to focus on purely ameliorative programs for the super-poor? Ok. You want to change the system in the hope (historically vain) that will make the super-poor disappear? I’m not so sure that is a good idea at all.”

The (probably) vain hope is that you can get rid of the super-poor through government social programs or by revamping the system in any currently imaginable way. The chronically super-poor exist in the UK, in France and in Germany. They share many of the same economic characteristics with their counterparts in the US. And especially in France I would suggest that a larger percentage of the pretty-darn poor (say bottom 10%) end up with fewer chances for advancement than the pretty-darn poor in the US. Maybe in very small countries you can get rid of the super-poor, though even Sweden and (differently) Denmark have been having trouble with the immigrant poor in recent times. France’s problems with the immigrant poor are of course famous.

“As to why inequality matters, I’d say that it matters because (at least in some dimensions of what matters) inequality is unjust.” -Chris Bertram, original post

“(1) I didn’t just say “inequality is unjust”. Saying that would have been nonsensical because making people equal on one dimension often makes them unequal on others.”-Chris Bertram, post 67.

Good lord. Just erase the entire conversation and start over.

Steve

You didn’t concede anything? What did you mean by writing, “No, it isn’t unjust that some people are born with worse genetic outcomes than others . . . .” I take that to be a concession that it isn’t unjust that some people are born with worse genetic outcomes than others. (This is different from your original, extremely broad claim that “inequality is unjust,” without taking into account any non-unjust factors that affect equality in quite substantial ways).

Functional, I think we have a question of audience here. (I find myself in the strange position of defending Chris here, I’ll try not to make a habit of it since it could cause the world to get sucked into a black hole). Chris is using terms and arguments with implications from his specialized field. CrookedTimber is a mixed audience of philosophical specialists and lots of other people. He doesn’t see it as a concession because to philosophical specialists it would be obvious that he isn’t (for instance) just ignoring all the post-Rawls literature on the difference between genetically predisposed outcomes and other outcomes in extreme cases. He is working in a narrow parameter of equality.

The problem here is that the political audience is different from the philosophical audience. Would your average Democratic Senator be able to address the problem of innate talent and what to do about it in the framework of economic equality issues? Doubtful. Since they couldn’t, they aren’t likely to take of those concerns in mind when writing laws. When your average politican talks about equality, he is talking about a much broader set and with much less understanding and though I haven’t seen Chris’ proposals yet I’m hoping that they are better than the typical politician’s.

Flip side, could your average Republican Senator address the issue well? Ha. I’m not even a philosopher and I’m pretty sure I covered the high points off the top of my head better than most Republican Senators could.

So here, you are interpreting the discussion about equality in its political context instead of its philosophical context. It isn’t wrong of you to do so, since the original post uses multiple frames too (references to Reynolds suggest a more political frame for instance). However Chris isn’t going to think you are right about a “gotcha” because of his background assumptions. In this instance he isn’t changing his mind. He is clarifying things that would have been obvious to his philosophical audience even if they weren’t obvious to the rest of us.

“In 2004 6.2% of people working full-time, full-year jobs earned less than $15,000 per year.”

How many of them were earning less than $15,000 the next year? How many of those exact same people were earning less than $20,000 the year after? How many will be earning less than $25,000 two years from now?

I submit that the answer to those questions is “very few”. Most people work at entry level jobs as entry level jobs. It isn’t a failure of the economic system that some people work at entry level jobs. It is an almost certain fact considering that when you enter the workforce you don’t have experience.

“In all advanced Western countries, over all substantial periods since WWII, the great majority of children haved lived better than their parents due to economic growth and technological advance. This is true regardless of where the government stands on a spectrum from contemporary U.S. Republican laissez-faire to say, Swedish socialism. One can argue about just how rapid the improvement has been under different systems, but it has been pretty rapid everywhere.”

This is a bit off topic, so I’m hesitant to address it. If I had vast amounts of time I would flesh out an argument sort of like this: on some issues, the US cannot emulate the Swedish-style models because its dynamic capitalism subsidies those models. There is no dynamic market country that the US can free ride off of for medical advances, technological advances, or military might. If Germany or France(neither as socialistic as Sweden) had to maintain enough of a military to be able to deal with things in Kosovo or be able to do something about Saddam invading Kuwait, they would be even worse off than they are now. If Europe had one medical research center as dynamic as Boston, San Diego, or Pennsylvania (they may have a rival to second-tier bio-research locations like Seattle or the Silicon Valley) we could talk about it. There are certain strategies which depend on the existance of a market like the US for their continued growth in technology. The US can’t fully emulate those strategies because the US can’t count on someone else to make the technological innovations at the same pace that we do now. This is not to say that Europe does not contribute technologically. It is to say that the rate of improvement would be much less without some country like the US around. There is a reason why Texas Instruments and then IBM and then Apple and then Microsoft all came out of the US. There is a reason why almost all of the major ‘European’ bio-research firms have a huge percentage of their operations in San Diego, Boston, and Pennsylvania. That reason has to do with the economic system and the dynamism it allows. Sweden Population–about 9,000,000. Massachusetts Population–about 6,000,000. San Diego Population–about 2,000,000. Sweden doesn’t have 4 times the advancements that come out of San Diego alone. I would be surprised if you even get parity on a non per-capita basis. (By the way, yes I am aware that Sweden is one of the bigger GDP spenders on medical research. That is why I think it is very fair to make the comparison. I’m not comparing San Diego to Nashville.)

“I submit that the answer to those questions is “very few”.”

And I submit that you are wrong Sebastian, and also that you just assumed your answer without knowing much about low-wage labor markets. Try reading Andersson/Holzer/Lane’s book “Moving Up or Moving On”, which tracks low earners and find that when tracked over a five year period the majority of them stayed low earners, even though this period was in the boom years of the late 90s. The sample is not completely comparable to the one I was using but it is close enough. What is going on here is that jobs with career potential — where there is a major upward earnings track — start at a higher wage than $15,000 per year. Since you are a college grad yourself, career-type earnings mobility is a fact of life for you and your friends. You probably have very little contact with the kinds of low-skill jobs that don’t have an attached promotion path or much if any possibility of wage growth. But they are out there. This is why one has to do research instead of just assume stuff.

As for the “Europe free rides” argument, this is another case where I think just making up the answer doesn’t really cut it. What you are saying might be true, it might not. One needs to look at patent rates and so forth. Certainly my cell phone contains a lot of European technology. Also, I would argue that any U.S. tech edge on Europe has a great deal to do with our heavily subsidized and government regulated higher ed sector, in particular the superiority of our research universities. These are not capitalist institutions (although they are competitive ones, which is good). For medical research in particular, you are looking at the most socialized area of U.S. technological development.

“Since you are a college grad yourself, career-type earnings mobility is a fact of life for you and your friends. You probably have very little contact with the kinds of low-skill jobs that don’t have an attached promotion path or much if any possibility of wage growth. But they are out there. This is why one has to do research instead of just assume stuff.”

Actually no. I have had lots of contact with people with low-skill jobs, in college I was engaged with a program to teach the children of immigrants (often illegal) English and Math skills. This intersects with the findings of “Moving Up” because many immigrants are reluctant to change jobs–stunting their income growth. Illegal immigrants of course have difficulty changing jobs (a whole different topic). Their children on the other hand have great prospects if they learn to read and write and can avoid joining gangs (no small feat I’ll admit). But while all of these problems change how ideas of equality play out, none of them are best addressed through an “equality” lens or analysis.

As to why inequality matters, I’d say that it matters because (at least in some dimensions of what matters) inequality is unjust.

So let’s see if I’ve got this straight: ordering society so as to reduce inequality is a matter of fundamental justice. In formulating rules for international trade, too, justice is paramount.

But when it comes to rules for relations among nations, “we need principles that are acceptable not only to democratic states….but also to non-democratic ones.” This is apparently “a matter of practical necessity”, not justice–obviously, since giving dictatorships a veto over rules of international conduct is hardly a recipe for any kind of justice.

I can think of plenty of rather unattractive reasons for this rather striking inconsistency. Is there a defensible one?

…giving dictatorships a veto over rules of international conduct is hardly a recipe for any kind of justice.

Some worship “free markets”, others “democracy” – typcal simon-soru silliness.

Giving democracies a veto over rules of international conduct is no more just than giving it to dictatorships. You only have to think about it for two seconds to understand why.

Chris– you suggest that a particular life position a person is born into is associated with specific set of rewards ( such as job , education and so on ) so one child may be well off while the other one very badly off. This according to you is a case of inequality that matters. But what is your argument for showing that this is an example of those inequalities that “are ours to arrange” ? As David Schmidtz says there seems to be a prior moral question precisely at this point. ( Nozick has an example of two suitors that would suggest that it is an open question but I have no time to look it up now .)

Material inequality is fine; it’s thievery that’s unjust. For example, if I own the only factory in town and your choice is between starvation and working for peanuts – then having political equality won’t do you much good. This kinda thing is inherent in capitalist systems where capitalists own means of production; it always exists in one degree or another. That’s one of the essential characteristics of the system. Most people find it troubling. Some even go so far as writing and publishing various manifestos and organizing vanguard parties to do away with the system. Does this really seem so complicated?

Sebastian: Well, I stand corrected on your range of reading. Sorry. I guess interpretation of the Moving Up/Moving On results is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. Their low earnings limit is about 12,000 in today’s dollars, their “partially low” limit matches my $15,000. They find that among low earners during the years 1993-1995, only 27% earned above $15,000 per year each year from 1999 to 2001. Almost half (46%) continued to earn below $15,000 per year each year 1999-2001. The remainder bounced back and forth between earning less than $15K and more than $15K. Over the 1999-2001 period, mean annual earnings for people who were “low earners” from 1993-1995 were only $15,800.

Sorry, but that seems like a pretty crappy mobility record to me for one of the best, tightest labor markets in the 20th century. Sure, it’s OK in a percentage sense, and earnings of $15K are technically enough to bring a family out of poverty (with our ridiculously low poverty line), but come on…your life in the U.S. is going to suck if you are earning $15K per year. This is not a picture of middle class transition, it’s hanging on to stability by your fingertips.

Also, since his initial low earning category is not limited to FT/FY workers he finds 8% of the population in the initial low earner category, and close to 15% in either persistent low earnings or “partially low” (never making more than $15K over a 3 year period). I do agree with you that the economic system works pretty well for the majority of the population (at least at present, with the Feds pumping fiscal steroids in at the max possible rate), but the minority who are in trouble is larger than you portray it.

I’ll check out the Derek Lowe stuff.

“your life in the U.S. is going to suck if you are earning $15K per year.”

That really depends on where you live. Nowhere is $15,000 a kingly income, but in some areas (those with very little access to better jobs) it isn’t abject poverty either. You aren’t earning $15,000 a year in California unless you have zero skills and no ability to learn–pizza delivery pays better than $7.50 per hour in San Diego. Of course San Diego is more expensive than New Orleans (pre-Katrina). That is one of the reasons these studies are a bit hard to use. I would suggest that someone getting paid $20,000 in San Diego is poorer than someone getting paid $13,000 in Kansas. But that is apparently really hard to measure properly.

The clueless like holsclaw should pick-up the phone and call folks doing social service work – better yet those working food banks. Actually, I’d find it a wonderful kind of performance art if a discussion like this took place in a food bank, in front of folks picking up a bag of of the needful.

Perhaps sebby could peruse income distribution tables and determine what proportion of Americans fall into the less than $15k category. Then again, I suppose, it doesn’t really matter how many people have zero skills and no ability to learn. Perhaps they might just die instead of whining and reduce the surplus population.

Well Sebastian, maybe you can offer your opinion on my reasoning then. First, on the fact that the system works superbly for 90% of the population, I have shown evidence that this is not what 90% of the population thinks. It isn’t event what 50% of the population thinks. Are they all mistaken then? Or who is the judge of what is a superbly functionning system? Would you consider the system is functionning superbly were you a black kid born in a household in New York making 6,000$ a year (and lest you tell me this is absurdly low, you would then be above the average income of the lowest 20%, so well amongst the 90% for wich the system allegedly works superbly)? Please also remember that your chance to see your first birthday would then be less than if you were born in Kerala.

Second, though inequalities per say may not be too big a problem, do you concur that inequalities can endanger the democratic basis of a society because people may cease to envision themselves as part of a single social body? If yes, do you take the democratic system seriously enough so as to conclude that inequalities matter? If no, then we have a factual disagreement, and it would be clear to me where our opinions diverge.

Lowest 5th I mean.

regarding inequality– the role of envy in motivating critique of inequality should be explored more. For suppose that it is not the injustice of some people being poorer than others that offends but rather that there are people who have more and deserve it than you which is upseting. Is it not posible that egalitarianism is underwritten by envy.
Is this not a problem for egalitarianism if it is true ? It might be a problem because envy is morally problematic; it is considered to be one of the seven deadly sins and is or seems inherently irrational : it involves experience of distress felt by the good fortune of others.
This is what Kant says about it :
“Envy is a propensity to view
wellbeing of others with distress
even though it does not detract
from ones own ” ( met. of morals )
If it is true that this is what underwrites egalitarianism than the left critique of inequality might be in trouble ?

Chris- you are quite right of course that one cannot *refute* a belief without disproving its content. So offering a psychological explanation of it seems irrelevant . However although strictly speaking one cannot refute such believes a correct psychological account might be *disillusioning*. To see this consider the following example : suppose my uncle Anthony a succesful investor , gives me a tip on stock X . I go and buy stock X . But then discover that my uncle Anthony got his tip from a swindler Bob. Clearly the discovery would not *prove* that stock X isnt a good investment but it would still make a good sense to sell the stock X , why ? because I have lost only grounds I had for buying it in first place : my confidence in uncle Anthony’s expertise.
The point more generally is that sometimes it is possible to discredit a belief without refuting it. ( also note that D. Dennett is now doing precisely this in his own work see his latest book but with religion : in some way trying to discredit it by offering an evolutionary account of it )

Sometimes, in social situations, I listen to people who I know are in the top 1% of income earners in America, and the top .001% of income earners in the history of the world so far, whining about how much they have to pay in taxes. I never accuse them of greed, but argue about policy as if there is no element of moral cretinism in the room.

This is because I believe the “envy” objection to egalitarianism is about as interesting as the “greed” objection to inegalitarianism. zdenek, I can only speak for myself here, but I believe that in a just (egalitarian) society I would be worse off financially. Can I, at least, be excused the envy objection?

China attempted to force equality of means and this turned out poorly. Historically it’s a failed concept. At some point it requires a state mandated punishment for success.

On philosophical level, I fail to see any difference between an attempt to enforce equality of means and an attempt to enforce genetic sameness. There are always going to be genetic traits that can be converted into increased means (beauty, speed, strength, etc). To punish these individuals or their children seems biologically wrong. Perhaps a better solution is to ensure that the power of the state is not used to transfer wealth to the wealthy. This seems to be where the current forms of capitalism break down. Democracies and Republics should have given the masses of less wealthy the political means to prevent this. Unfortunately the infighting over control of social interaction is superseding economic concerns.

Point of order? How much was Cato charging to attend this symposium? It should be evident that these are money making propositions.

That was made clear to me when I was involved in a professional organization that put on such dog-and-pony shows. Their primary interest was not professional, but in making money.