Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Distributive justice: Distributive justice is the fair distribution of goods, services, and opportunities in a society. Some theories focus on equality, meaning that everyone should receive an equal share of resources. Others focus on need, meaning that resources should be distributed to those who need them most. Still others focus on merit, meaning that resources should be distributed to those who deserve them the most. See also Justice, Community, Society, Equal opportunities, Inequalities._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Welfare Economics on Distributive Justice - Dictionary of Arguments
Gaus I 213 Distributive justice/welfare economics/Moon: It is important to stress that state provision is not necessarily superior to private provision. Even if there are clear examples of 'market failures' , areas in which voluntary provision is incapable of providing an optimal level of services of one sort or another, it does not follow that government action will be superior. Just as real-world markets are subject to market failure, so real-world governments are subject to non-market failure. >Market failure, >State provision/Moon, >Adverse selection/Barr, >Privatization/Moon, >Welfare state/Political philosophy. Gaus I 214 The policies of the welfare state do not simply make it possible for individuals to realize their own interests more effectively, but generally redistribute income (...). Efficiency- based arguments normally take the outcome produced by market exchange, prior to governmental taxation and transfers, as their baseline, and show that a particular policy can at least in principle make everyone better off than they would be given that baseline. But to the extent that welfare policies delib- erately redistribute income, those whose income goes down would normally (though not necessarily) be worse off; such policies could be justified, then, only by invoking values other than efficiency.* Privatization/problems: any private system of provision is limited to pooling the shared risks that people face in the future, and so presupposes a 'baseline' of a given distribution of advantages and disadvantages. But from a larger point of view, this restriction to a given status quo is arbitrary. Redistribution: (...) any distribution of 'the advantages of social co-operation' must be justified, whether it results from market transactions or from welfare state policies specifically designed to redistribute income. The presumption that distributions that result from 'government' action must be justified, and that pretax and pretransfer distributions are presumptively just, appears to be widespread at least in America, leading to hostility on the part of some towards the welfare state. Libertarianism/Nozick: Strong libertarians like Nozick hold that taxation to redistribute resources from some taxpayers to others is not only presumptively but actually unjust because it violates citizens' property rights (...) (Nozick 1974(1)). MoonVs: This critique obviously presupposes that the right we have to our property, including income from employment or business activity, is not created by the state, but exists in some sense 'prior' to political life, and so limits what governments may legitimately do. If such a theory of natural or prepolitical rights could be vindicated, it would block redistributive welfare state programmes. >Fundamental rights/Political philosophy. * The argument that the alleviation of poverty is a public good, discussed above, would be an example of justifying redistribution on efficiency grounds. 1. Nozick, Robert (1974) Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford: Blackwell. Moon, J. Donald 2004. „The Political Theory of the Welfare State“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications_____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Welfare Economics Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
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