Will Wilkinson - Latest Comments in The Curious Irrelevance of Inequality

Re: The Curious Irrelevance of Inequality

x. trapnel — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:20:03 -0000

From a slightly different direction--are you at all worried about how inequality might matter as an *input* into injustice, rather than an outcome of it? In an earlier post you're willing to take cognizance of cultural threats to autonomy; is there no parallel worry about extreme levels of inequality creating a culture of entitlement and privilege, on the one hand, and slavishness and resentment, on the other?

Re: The Curious Irrelevance of Inequality

MDM — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:55:12 -0000

On the one hand, your comments echo David's Schmidtz's point about humanitarianism vs egalitarianism: the reason to help fix cleft palates is that cleft palates are bad, not that there is an unequal distribution of them.
On the other hand, insofar as society is seen as a "cooperative venture for mutual advantage" (isn't that Rawls's phrase?) shouldn't we worry when the least well off are not benefitting as much as they could be from growth? How sustainable is this positive sum venture if the poor realistically believe they could be better off with some other arrangement?
Like the others, I'm not yet seeing much Rawls in your Rawlsekianism.

Re: The Curious Irrelevance of Inequality

Jacques Chester — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:27:40 -0000

If I burn down your house, the problem is not that housing inequality has increased. The problem is that I have burned down your house.

That's a suggestive way of putting things. In physics perfect equality of temperature is the heat death; all useful energy has been used up and further change is impossible.

Re: The Curious Irrelevance of Inequality

Grant Gould — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:20:29 -0000

Can you rescue inequality perhaps by pointing out that confiscatory redistribution, the burning down of houses, and so forth are a form of inequality, and a particularly pernicious one at that?

Re: The Curious Irrelevance of Inequality

Dan — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:25:26 -0000

Yeah this seems oddly like not-Rawls-at-all. You don't believe in deontological absolute rights, so why is "any injustice" too much?

Re: The Curious Irrelevance of Inequality

Micha Ghertner — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 02:14:20 -0000

Didn't Nozick say all this in ASU as a rebuttal to Rawls, or am I getting him confused with Hayek?

Re: The Curious Irrelevance of Inequality

KJ — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:49:22 -0000

I can agree with this but I think it important to point out that poverty is defined at an absurdly low level. It's $21,200 for a family of four (2006). Government aid and EIC certainly adds to that but it hardly pushes income to a level I find minimally acceptable.

As a liberal who often fetishizes inequality, I'm happy to drop it so long as we discuss poverty realistically. I imagine if we laid it out, a true minimum after tax income for a family of 4 should be no less than 50K in most urban areas, perhaps a bit less elsewhere. This is roughly the median income for a family of 4 now so we have quite a bit of work to do.

If Health Insurance were part of the deal, that could probably be lowered. My family health insurance costs my employer and me about $13,000 a year. Quite a ridiculous number if you think about it.