thoughts on Wilkinson’s views on income inequality

Freddie

Freddie deBoer used to blog at lhote.blogspot.com, and may again someday. Now he blogs here.

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75 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    Interesting post… but it seems to me that the “injustice” of inequality is relational in essence and is not based on any particular baseline.

    Cutting down the tall poppies also gets rid of the injustice.

    We’ve got a guy who plays basketball and makes a kabillion dollars a year, owns three houses, 12 cars, and has 10 kids. Let’s bust out some Job and break his knees, burn down his houses, crash his cars, and kill his children. (We’ll have Satan do all these things and get rid of any moral problems that way.)

    There is no more inequality… and the problem of “justice” and “injustice” goes away.

    But you aren’t one whit better. That kid in the inner city isn’t one whit better (well, if he enjoyed watching Job play basketball he may be psychically worse off). No one is any better off at all. And Job went from Up Here to Down Here. So, arguably, people are *WORSE* off.

    And yet the problem of justice isn’t there anymore.

    If justice exists in perception only but is not intrinsic to anything… well, it’s not justice anymore. It’s just applied envy.Report

  2. Freddie, Thanks for such a thoughtful post. I suspect our views may be even closer together than you think. In discussing the marginal utility of consumption vs. production, I was taking on the utilitarian argument on its own terms. In prioratarian contractualist terms, the argument would be that even the worst off class would prefer investment in production rather than progressive redistribution if production leaves them better off over time.

    I think where moderate classical liberal and welfare liberals often part ways is over the importance of a government guarantee of the basic minimum. (Again I’ll recommend my guru David Schmidtz, this time his paper “Guarantees.”) I favor the system that in fact tends to do the best for the worst off. That may or may not involve redistribution. Many welfare liberals think this is too weak in the sense that the provision of the minimum can seem incidental to the purpose of the overall socio-economic scheme. In my experience, many welfare liberals seem to think that when redistribution is made a matter of public policy, it signals our collective commitment to ensuring that the minimum is met, and this kind of political expression of social cohesion or solidarity is so valuable that it makes redistribution preferable even when a non-redistributive means to achieving the minimum leaves everyone better off. I think a similar line of thinking stands behind opposition to social insurance schemes based on what I call “vertical” or intrapersonal redistribution — redistribution from an one stage of a person to a later stage through mandatory savings programs. I am convinced that a vertically redistributive Singapore-style health care system is the best thing going in prioritarian terms. But I think a lot of welfare liberals oppose it anyway because of the weight they put on the symbolic meaning of interpersonal (horizontal) redistribution.Report

    • Michael Drew in reply to Will Wilkinson says:

      When “leaves everyone better off” means that some are better off to the tune of multiples of the yearly income that is produced for those who merely receive the minimum we set to declare the system a success, the motivation for a more interventionist redistributive model may become clearer. This clearly leaves those with that attitude open to the charge of wanting to soak the rich, or even of limiting the economic potential of fellow citizens. Some of them might in turn respond, “Feature not bug.”Report

  3. E.D. Kain says:

    Excellent and thought-provoking as ever, Freddie. Lots to ponder. Welcome back, by the by. I see your brief hiatus has not left you short on word-count… 😉Report

  4. This is one hell of a post, Freddie that’s stimulated a lot of thoughts in my mind (I can think of at least four follow-up posts that I’d like to do). A few thoughts:

    1. Your central argument for a contract-based justification for redistribution sounds basically correct to me. I actually think it could be an even stronger argument than you realize and is similar to the argument that won me over to the view that redistribution is morally justifiable and even morally required for the purpose of creating a minimal standard of living. The basic structure of this stronger version of the argument would be that the existence of the State is what allows the wealthy to become wealthy, and that this is to at least some degree at the expense of the poor. I would argue that the ideal (but obviously unachievable) aim of redistribution ought to be to estimate the amount of redistribution that the existence of the state creates from the poor to the rich. The rich get to keep the productivity gains they achieve with that money but need to, in essence, repay the money that they have received from the poor via the existence of the state. The “interest” on this loan is the recognition that minimal standards of living will increase over time. If I have the time, I’d like to explore this concept of redistribution as repayment of a loan in more depth, but I think this gives the basic gist of things.

    2. The emphasis of liberals on inequality as a justification for redistribution in and of itself has long puzzled me. If it’s a moral justification, then it validates every libertarian and conservative argument that modern liberal redistribution is nothing short of class warfare and/or ultimately aimed at a return to socialism. If it’s a utilitarian justification, then it lacks any compelling moral dimension and is also as equally unprovable as libertarian and conservative arguments that a given redistribution will be economically harmful.

    3. Although I think you’re right that libertarians and conservatives are often far too certain about their own utilitarian arguments against redistribution, the fact that liberal utilitarian arguments are equally unprovable leaves them at a distinct disadvantage on most questions. This is because Americans are for the most part conservative, at least in the sense that they are disinclined to support change so long as they are generally satisfied with their own personal position. As between two equally unprovable utilitarian claims, Americans will thus tend to side with the claim that argues that change will cause more harm than good. To be sure, there are times when you can get Americans to support a given change on utilitarian grounds – but those tend to be limited to situations where the average person will experience the effects of that change directly (e.g., tax cuts, federal prescription drug benefits). Libertarians and conservatives run into the same type of problem when they try to do things like make changes to Social Security – in that case, the utilitarian argument will almost always be a loser for libertarians and conservatives and a winner for liberals.

    4. The only explanation I can think of for why we’ve seen the proliferation of inequality-based arguments for redistribution in recent years is that liberals have misunderstood the nature of conservative and libertarian arguments against redistribution in the past, in essence believing their own caricature that those arguments were really just transparent justifications for helping the rich at the expense of the poor.Report

    • North in reply to Mark Thompson says:

      This is a great post Mark. I especially like #1. I’d even buy into the idea that we owe a certain minimum standard to the poor as part of societies reward to them for not rising up en masse and burning the whole thing down. My primary concern would be that the minimal standard provided should be sufficient to preserve life and health but should not in much of any way provide happiness.

      To put it to the American creed I’d think that the proper roles of Liberals should be providing the bare essentials necessary for life (but not comfort!!!) and of course the libertarians (and conservatives if they’d ever pull their heads from there.. never mind..) would be in charge of zealously defending our liberty (but compromised liberty of course since the Liberals would need resources to sustain bare bones life) and the individual should be exclusively responsible for their pursuit and attainment (but especially responsible for their failure to attain!) happiness. Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness; what could be more American?Report

    • Kyle in reply to Mark Thompson says:

      Great comment, Mark. On your point number two, what I find frustrating is that my experience has shown that liberals fall into both camps.

      The movement successfully and uncritically marries the two justifications in a way that can be politically productive, if not an imperfect advocacy of each side’s fundamental goals. (of course there are issues where the same thing happens with conservatives)

      With liberal redistributionism, I think the danger is that at some time focusing on inequality as intrinsically bad will supplant a productive focus on attacking problems that arise when inequality leaves people below a socially acceptable level.

      Though, presently, I think this already defines liberal populists who seem far more excited about the possibility of soaking the rich than actually fixing problems.Report

      • Michael Drew in reply to Kyle says:

        Shouldn’t a persuasive political ideology have both a moral and a practical component? It’s harmful to any notion of ideologically-driven change (a legitimate position if it is what you intend) to insist that the instrumental and non-instrumental cases as I like to call them for a political project be seen as mutually contaminating and thereby canceling.Report

  5. North says:

    You’ve written a noble and very earnest post. It’s very distinctly Freddie. Very laudable and high minded but I can’t hook my own mental train to it very well. I’ve never been able to buy into the concept of positive rights and unless you can not only accept and endorse positive rights but also do so with vehement enthusiasm the whole edifice doesn’t carry the same appeal.

    Also shorn from your argument, it feels at least to me, is a certain amount of the idea of people behaving like, well, people instead of reliably turning gears. You gloss over this by depriving Wilkinson only of the right to his TV and the sports figure only of his eighth car, who could object to depriving them of such luxury when it could feed others. But the country, the world is filled with hapless mouths (why are they hapless? You neither describe nor seem to care). Why not also Wilkinson’s table and the seventh, sixth and fifth car? At some point some of the haves have been confiscated from to the point where they’re now reaching the bottom of your proverbial cup. What motivation do they have to work and produce only so they may live at the level of those who do neither? So they stop. But they must be fed so away goes Wilkinson’s computer and phone along with the fourth, third and second car. Wilkinson is now writing his thoughts on rocks and lobbing them out into the park and it occurs to him that he’s putting a lot of effort in but is living at a level equal to any of the rest at the bottom of society. Perhaps he is civic minded enough to go on but many are not and away goes the first car and on and on. We have observed in societies a powerful disinclination in people to labor if the fruits of said labor are going to others, whether they are the needy or just people who say they’re needy.

    You also seem to very readily dismiss the concern for the “leaky bucket” issue. I’d particularly like to touch this one because I believe the metaphor is imperfect in that the leaked water merely spills onto the floor, a loss but in no way negative beyond its’ waste. I’d like to suggest, instead, that we describe it as a living sponge issue. The costs of transferring the water from cup to cup could be better described as being captured inside the sponge (the bureaucracy) that is used to soak from the full cups and then dribble to the empty ones. In the leaky bucket scenario the leaked water lies inert upon the floor but in the growing sponge metaphor it does not. No, it lies captured within the sponge and the sponge grows from it, requiring that it absorb more water from the have cups to sustain itself while still providing the same or less water to the empty cups it was ostensibly created to cater to. Soon it would be growing little tendrils of its’ own into more and more cups, its’ purpose in danger of abandoning entirely the interest in filling the empty cups in favor of sustaining its’ own bulk. Again the phenomenon of governmental beurocratic bloat is one we have observed in the real world at nauseating length. (I have myself had a stint in the employ of government and can attest to the complacent entitled attitude that underlies its staid halls.)

    I shudder now, because reading back over my objections I can hear the desolate howling of the libertarian wilderness. I genuinely do believe in safety nets and that there are things that government can and should do. I just am jaded about the nature of my fellow humans and the tendency for my deep left liberal brethren (like you) to simultaneously view the most productive of our society as endless fonts of resources or to view our most downtrodden as innocent and hapless wards of our largess.

    I applaud your goals; I just lack your optimism for positive rights and your faith (naïveté?) in human nature.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to North says:

      “I shudder now, because reading back over my objections I can hear the desolate howling of the libertarian wilderness.”

      It’s not howling.

      It’s singing.Report

    • greginak in reply to North says:

      Wow you got a lot of words out of the slippery slope fallacy and the accusation that anybody who is poor is a lazy good for nothing. Impressive. Oh you do have a nifty strawman there to.Report

      • North in reply to greginak says:

        What can I say? I’m verbose. That’s a pretty harsh summary, would you mind identifying which argument is the straw man, and which the slope? I think I can guess which one gets the lazy good for nothing one though I think that’s unfair.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to North says:

          In my experience, I find that if people say “straw man” without pointing out a nuance between the original argument and the restated argument, or when they say “slippery slope” without pointing out how X would not, in fact, lead to Y (and none of this “not necessarily” stuff, I’d prefer “P did it, Q did it, and R did X and Y didn’t happen”), they’re repeating phrases that they’ve seen used to great effect in other arguments.Report

  6. mike farmer says:

    What, exactly, would a basic minimum entail? A home? Healthcare? A car? Clothing? Food? Cash Allowance? I’m just curious what all would be provided and to what level of income.Report

    • North in reply to mike farmer says:

      Well, Mike, the current system measures it as a % of the median wealth of the people, and that way lies madness. So some other objective and likely static version probably would be necessary.Report

    • “This, I think, is exactly it. The purpose of liberal social programs is above all to provide for a certain minimum threshold in several main areas of basic human security and comfort.”

      This is what I’m asking — what does this “basic human security and comfort” entail in real goods and services? I’m interested in the details of how it would work in an ideal form. I know we now have welfare programs, but I’m assuming Freddie is talking about something above and beyond our present welfare efforts.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to mike farmer says:

        “basic human security and comfort” in 1800 is significantly different from 1880 which is significantly different from 1960 which is significantly different from 2000 which, interestingly enough, is different from 2009.

        I suspect that any answer you’d give on what human rights demand a poor family be given could be used, in 50 years, as a punchline.Report

        • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

          Yes of course, but what is the point. Of course standards and expectations change, but we still act in the present. And we judge how well we are doing now by our standards in the present. Infant mortality is certainly better then 200 years ago. That is a useful bit of info but it isn’t really pertinent to discussing how poor our infant mortality rate is now compared to other countries ( or between income levels) in the present.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

            What is a “just” infant mortality rate?Report

            • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

              I have no idea what a just infant mortality rate is. I can compare our infant mortality rate to other countries to see if it meets what I consider my expectations for the USA and for a rich western country. We have the 33rd lowest infant mortality rate according the UN and 46th lowest rate according to the CIA world factbook. To me that is a disgrace.

              Add to that the fact that infant mortality rate varies massively by race and class. The infant mortality rate for blacks would be in the 90-100th place compared to other countries. Again that is a disgrace.

              It is certainly wonderful that infant mortality rates have dropped over the last century but that is not the metric that matters to me when looking at what we can or should do about infant mortality now.

              So there is no just infant mortality rate. But there can be far better performance compared to what we know is possible and we can try to eliminate race and class based differences in infant mortality since that seems unjust, at least to me.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to greginak says:

                So, it has to do with where we stand in relation to others in addition to where we stand in relation to where we stood yesterday?

                Would you say it’s a vector?Report

              • greginak in reply to Jaybird says:

                Where we stand in relation to others can give us an idea of what is possible and what is reasonable. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason why the infant mortality rate of blacks is on a third world level.Report

  7. mike farmer says:

    No, this is what I was looking for — “I believe that the first priority of both liberalism and society is to help those at the bottom, and to establish “floors” of minimal standards for all citizens in certain key areas of human security and comfort– food, clothing, shelter, health care, education. ”

    What is that floor, and who would receive this minimum? Would people at a certain age begin receiving this assistance, or anyone below a certain income level? If families receive assistance, do the children begin receiving assistance when they reach the age of 18?Report

  8. James says:

    I think that a great deal of rot gets talked about utiltiarianism, & I fear you’ve listened to far too much of it.

    Neither you, nor Wilkinson, seem to have read Principles of Morality & Legislation, or if you have then you must have neglected the numerous occasions were Bentham quite explicitly states that security must be prioritised over equality, staging a fairly straightforward defence of property.

    As for property “rights”, well those Bentham also deals with pretty well. Put simply the error you are making is in imagining that any form of natural right is anything save a fiction. It may be a fiction which you are particularly fond of (Wilkinson wants to keep his money in his wallet and his television in his lounge & well…he would) but that is all that it is.

    Weren’t you an existentialist? Do I really have to tell you this?

    This privileging of the value of minimal standards is not utilitarian. A utilitarian viewpoint would insist that redistributing wealth to those at the bottom would be moral only if the total amount of happiness/utility increased as a result of doing so. I can easily imagine a situation where this may not be the case.

    Very well, that’s an interesting fictional world you’ve dreamt up for us. I’m sure that there could be an interesting series of novels in it. But in this one (which is the one we must address) that is not the case. Ethics/legislation only matter because human actions have outcomes upon this world.

    Here, utilitarianism works perfectly fine. We don’t need your contractual fiction to justify redistribution in pursuit of equality. In fact the last thing political theory needs is yet another “contract” that nobody gets to sign.

    Indeed, utilitarianism insist that it is unjust to redistribute if doing so lowers collective utility, even if the people at the bottom are truly suffering. (This would be a situation where the suffering of the poorest was extreme, but where the people in the middle and upper classes outnumbered them by a high enough margin.)

    I think we can be agreed that this hypothetical is not relevant to discussions with reality. You yourself point out in this article & have often pointed out that there is a huge amount of wealth in society which could be mobilised to combat the suffering of the poor. You yourself use the example of the many cars. How much suffering is brought to someone stripped of a seventh car compared to a family living with degenerative diseases & without healthcare?

    We can tell that fairly well by how many families with the money for one but not the other opt for the former, can we not?

    But if we believe that the first purpose of social spending is to alleviate the ailments of the people at the bottom, and not to raise overall utility, then redistributing wealth is justified regardless of overall utility.

    I think you are abandoning a principle which (despite Bentham’s personal views, shaped as they were by an absence of the latter quantification of poverty that was to be made by the Rowntree report & works like it, as well as an understandable ignorance of contemporary social democratic Scandinavia & its successes in sustaining a secure & equal society) could still be of immense use to you. & even if you don’t agree, it is perfectly possible to reach Will Wilkinson’s views via a utilitarian framework. Bentham basically managed it.

    I have an idea of why you are doing so now, & I thank you for that, although why the left as a whole does so remains beyond me, but it’s for some pretty poor reasons. Your tacit acceptance of Wilkinson’s analysis suggests that you are both ignorant of large portions of Bentham’s writings on the topic, although I may be mistaken here. All in all this reminds me a tad of your writings on the neo-liberals screwing over liberalism with their self-loathing.

    You’d be far better just to tell Will to stop resting upon the nonsense of natural rights, & it’s a real shame to see you not doing so.

    Especially when your argument regarding WW’s security reads like a less archaic passage of Bentham, you end your article with: “I am far less interested in making people equal than I am in making them safe, happy and free. As if people could be steadily happy without being safe & free!Report

    • Freddie in reply to James says:

      I am an existentialist. Existentialism is not utilitarian. Utilitarianism makes man an object in the world; it reduces the consequences of his actions to their ability to generate utility or not, and thus makes them independent of his choice. Perhaps the most important existential insight is to beware of any moral framework which seeks to remove from man the urgency of choosing. Moral codes that remove the subjective instance of the choice lead to bad faith, because they tell the man using them that he is not responsible for his own conduct. He believes in error that his code is choosing for him.

      I find a lot to like about utilitarianism. But a philosophy that is (to my understanding) so apathetic to ideas of rights, personal affinities and prior commitments isn’t one that I can endorse.

      As for some of your other comments, I have to think about it. Certainly, while outside the philosophical confines of my academic discipline, I’m not a particularly seasoned philosophical writer, particularly when I am applying it to political ideas. I should have made the caveat that this is all just an accounting of my reactions.Report

      • James in reply to Freddie says:

        Freddie, you write that “Utilitarianism makes man an object in the world; it reduces the consequences of his actions to their ability to generate utility or not”, which I suppose is fair enough. Certainly for utilitarianism’s purposes, while moralising or legislating that is what you should focus upon. However I fail to see how this renders someone “independent of his choice.” As for your claim that: He believes in error that his code is choosing for him, I think the error there is that there is a clear difference between a code & a principle.

        Additionally, I struggle with the notion that it is: “apathetic to ideas of rights, personal affinities and prior commitments isn’t one that I can endorse.” What I found most striking about reading Bentham recently was how unjudgemental his approach towards human interests is. For one thing he’s about as far from the New Atheists as it is possible to get, arguing that belief in God brings happiness to people’s lives (despite being incapable of sampling that particular pleasure personally). What he argues against is using “rights, personal affinities and prior commitments” as a basis of moralising or legislating. He quite rightly terms the usage of them as “The Arbitrary Principle”.

        This is a mistaken basis since it shifts from person to person: to try & impose your whims upon everyone (be it from a hectoring pulpit or with the mechanism of the state at your back) is an attempt to craft a tyranny. & nothing makes people less happy than a tyranny.

        But is this to say that there are no rights, or personal ties/backgrounds? Of course not! Nothing frustrates a person more than being denied something which they deem their right (Bentham argues solely against the perception of this as natural & the foolish imagining that government is meant to exist to protect them, an entirely ahistorical folly). I can think of few pleasures I extract from existence which do not stem from “personal affinities” & if prior commitments were abandoned completely all of a sudden society would surely come undone.

        In short, all of the things you cited are central to the provision of pleasure. It would be hard to imagine happiness existing without any of them. To argue that utiltiarianism fails to pay heed to them is to try & turn the principle of utility upon itself (something that Bentham notes happens a great deal).

        As for some of your other comments, I have to think about it. Certainly, while outside the philosophical confines of my academic discipline, I’m not a particularly seasoned philosophical writer, particularly when I am applying it to political ideas. I should have made the caveat that this is all just an accounting of my reactions.

        Appreciated. The problem is that Vulgar Utilitarianism is an even more distorted fiend than Vulgar Marxism. I really enjoyed your piece, which is about all a utilitarian can ask of you. 😉Report

  9. James says:

    Furthermore: “I find there to be some simple, intuitive moral truth to the idea that the family should have the money for rent before the guy should have his 8th car, regardless of how he came to possess the money necessary to pay for it.”

    It is a simple moral truth. One named the Principle of Utility.Report

  10. James says:

    *Principles of Morals & LegislationReport

    • Will Wilkinson in reply to James says:

      James, I am no stranger to Bentham. I would recommend a volume edited by Samuel Scheffler, Consequentialism and its Critics, to help you get up to speed on the 20th century debate. Also, what leads you to assume I believe in natural rights?Report

      • James in reply to Will Wilkinson says:

        “Utilitarianism says it doesn’t matter. So utilitarianism is false. As far as I’m concerned, the main reason you can’t just take my TV or take the money out of my wallet and give it to somebody who would get more out of it is that it’s my TV, it’s my money. It’s not yours to redistribute.”Report

  11. Michael Drew says:

    …if we assume that the greatest problem is in how much water ends up wasted on the floor

    One person’s wasted water is another person’s job.Report

  12. Michael Drew says:

    One straw man here is the suggestion (vaguely alluded to) that anyone anywhere is advancing the idea that any income inequality is a social problem that would justify redress. There are no proposals for radical egalitarian redistribution anywhere in our political discourse, even at the farthest reaches of the Left. Everyone accepts that some will make more than others. It is a question of how extreme the inequalities are, producing what social imbalances, and what if any minimum standard of living we might wish to prevent our fellow families from falling below. This is far different from suggesting that inequality simpliciter might ever be considered a justification for redistribution in America. Hasn’t and won’t.Report

  13. mike farmer says:

    “and what if any minimum standard of living we might wish to prevent our fellow families from falling below. ”

    Okay, so no one is talking about radical egalitarian redistribution. Does anyone have a practical plan? What would it look like in real life? What are you talking about?Report

    • Bob in reply to mike farmer says:

      I’ve ask the same questions repeatedly regarding conservatism and libertarianism.

      Are we in the Vector Zone once again?Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Bob says:

        Let’s look at Merle Haggard: ” In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there’s available… in America right now. ”

        Could we begin with something like: “Those laws that we didn’t have X years ago? Let’s get rid of those.”

        I mean, if I said “let’s get rid of PATRIOT” and we got rid of it, would that be “a plan” or would you see it as the absence of a plan and just yet another attempt of libertarians to make us more vulnerable to foreign terrorists who want to kill our children?Report

        • Bob in reply to Jaybird says:

          I need some fleshing-out of Mr. Haggard’s hell before I buy that heaping steaming pile of garabage.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Bob says:

            How about the part two of the post?

            Would you say that getting rid of PATRIOT would be just asking some Islamists to kill our children and doesn’t constitute a plan at all?Report

          • Mark Thompson in reply to Bob says:

            I think I can come up with a pretty good list here….

            The War on Drugs
            Patriot Act
            Weakening of habeas corpus
            No-knock police raids
            “Free speech zones” and “speech codes”
            Surveillance cameras becoming an ever-present part of urban life
            Warrantless wiretaps
            Militarization of police forces
            Raised drinking ages

            ….And that’s just the stuff on which liberals would agree with libertarians!Report

  14. mike farmer says:

    “I’ve ask the same questions repeatedly regarding conservatism and libertarianism.

    Are we in the Vector Zone once again?”

    Here, we’re discussing redistribution in the form of minimum standards — what are the minimum standards, and how are they applied? It’s easy to talk about what should be — some people don’t have much or anything at all, and some people have a lot, so take the excess from the those who have and give it those who don’t have — but we’re already doing that to a certain degree — what else needs to be done, and how will it be done? If the proponents can’t answer this simple question, then it’s all hot air and empty theorizing. I suppose we could debate about different theories, but unless we know what is being proposed by a theory, and how it can be implemented in reality, then it’s meaningless. I suspect that once the proponents begin explaining how this should be put into practice, they will realize the flaws in the theory, especially if they micro-model and follow all cause-effect links.

    I think, despite all the hyperbole about evil capitalists not giving a shit about the poor, that society as whole agrees that society is better served with a safety net — so the battle is over with contrasting theories between Hobbes and Marx — it’s not that there are a lot of people clamoring for a dog-eat-dog capitalism that eats the poor — most people are fine with safety net, so what else needs to be done?Report

    • Bob in reply to mike farmer says:

      What a “safety net” encompasses is *not* a settled political question. My net would be of a finer mesh that yours – I guess.Report

      • mike farmer in reply to Bob says:

        “What a “safety net” encompasses is *not* a settled political question. My net would be of a finer mesh that yours – I guess.”

        So, Bob, what do you think a national safety net should look like? If you could design minimum standards, a floor that no one is allowed to go below, what would it look like?Report

        • bob in reply to mike farmer says:

          I have no specific program in mind. My original comment to you this morning was to indicate the difficulty of describing how a political philosophy might be implemented. Nothing more. When I have asked the question I have not received satisfactory answers. What would a smaller, more limited, government look like?

          Obviously safety nets evolve, and the tendency, vector, has been to create a net with a finer mesh, for example, government financed job retraining, or support for the arts. Both of those examples are fairly recent developments. (Support for the arts a New Deal program ranks as fairly new for me.) Land grant colleges have a longer historical record. Pure Food and Drug Act, GI Bill, mandated childhood vaccinations, child labor laws all expansions of a safety net. I doubt the trend I see will change, that is, no fundamental rollback. I don’t see the NIH being abolished, likewise the Dept. of Education, or SS, or Medicare/Medicaid. Indeed the safety net now catches the “too big to fail.”

          I do not applaud every government action, neither do I see government as objectively evil.Report

          • mike farmer in reply to bob says:

            Well, you can’t accuse me of not proposing what a libertarian society would look like — on my blog, and here, I have stated over and over what i think will work. But I’m an idiot libertarian and my ideas are bullshit, so that’s why I was trying to get someone, anyone, from the liberal side to be explicit about what they envision as necessary regarding welfare and redistribution — instead I get more generalizations and run-around. They do sound awfully smart, though, when they are theorizing. I’m fucking impressed. I read Wilkerson like I do my favorite poets 🙂Report

    • Bob in reply to mike farmer says:

      Mike, you end your comment above with, “…most people are fine with safety net, so what else needs to be done?” I assumed you place yourself in that category. Rereading the comment I’m now not sure. So, are you “fine with [a] safety net?”Report

      • mike farmer in reply to Bob says:

        Yes, I’m fine with [a] safety net — as [a] matter of fact I’ve thought of many brilliant ways the private sector can create safety net offerings. What I’m not fine with is government confiscating people’s money and forcing them to provide the safety net that government thinks is appropriate. I’ve written extensively about the associations created in the U.S. before the New Deal, and how if we had allowed the private sector to continue with this genius we had for tackling problems without government coercion, we’d be in [a] better place. The grave instances of slavery and women’s rights are parts of [a] different subject — those were flaws in the Constitution not adhering fully to the Declaration of Independence, and they needed to be corrected through amendments — I’m talking about our problems with unemployment, poverty, technological changes in the workforce, education and such.

        See, I have no problem answering questions. It’s easy — try it.Report

    • Michael Drew in reply to mike farmer says:

      The questions raised here as far as I could tell were about what the right way philosophically to justify setting a parameter on distribution such that no one falls below a certain floor might be — do we feel the need to do that, why, and roughly what methods might we use to implement it? If you’re admitting of said need, and are satisfied with the reasons for it discussed so far, then I think that exhausts the scope of this particular discussion.

      On the quantitative nature of the minimum that might be set, well, for that it’s once more unto the (political) breach, my friend!Report

      • So, you don’t know either, heh?Report

        • Michael Drew in reply to mike farmer says:

          I don’t personally think I have the perfect level of social safety net in mind, but moreover the point is, even if I thought I did it wouldn’t matter, because it is among the most eminently political questions in public discourse, which is to say it can only be answered correctly via broad engagement in debate by society at large.Report

  15. Freddie says:

    Something that I should have made is explicit– one of the reasons for optimism in human society, I think, is that human suffering is largely material, whereas human flourishing is largely immaterial. (Neither is entirely that way, of course.) To me, that suggests that we can, with trial and error and often very contentious political maneuverings, find a way to allocate material resources to prevent human suffering while leaving enough space to permit, even encourage, human flourishing.Report

    • James in reply to Freddie says:

      S’a good point. Hope that you are correct.Report

    • Mark Thompson in reply to Freddie says:

      Freddie (and, for that matter, Will, if you’re still around):

      I’m curious about whether you have any thoughts on my point 1 in my comment above about envisioning redistribution as repayment on a loan such that a contractual view of social welfare may actually require interpersonal redistribution specifically.

      I ask more because I’m interested in whether it would close the gap between liberal (well, at least of the Freddie variety) and classical liberal views on the moral justifications for redistribution. If it’s just a philosophically weak argument, I’d like to hear that as well since my philosophical chops are not the strongest.Report

      • Freddie in reply to Mark Thompson says:

        There are a LOT of questions for me that need answers in this thread. I’ll definitely get to them and write a post; I’m just a little overwhelmed today.Report

      • Michael Drew in reply to Mark Thompson says:

        For what it’s worth, Mark, I think that is a supremely intriguing formula. Is it original from you? Regardless of that, I’d greatly welcome more on it from you if you’re considering it.Report

        • Michael Drew in reply to Michael Drew says:

          (It starkly subverts/inverts the usual assumptions about who does the lending and who the borrowing in society. I’m sure you recognize the radical potential of such an idea…)Report

          • As far as I know, the precise formulation is my own, but it draws heavily on some of Kevin Carson’s work (I’m not at all sure if Kevin himself would agree with it, though).

            That said, I entirely expect to find out that someone far more accomplished than I came up with a similar or identical formulation long ago. Something I’ve learned over the last two years is that no matter how original an idea you think you have, there’s always someone more famous than you who’s thought of it before. A lot of times, it’s even an idea that has been around in some form or another for literally milennia.

            I’m trying to figure out a way of expanding upon it, but there’s several different directions I could take it.Report

            • Michael Drew in reply to Mark Thompson says:

              Certainly the idea that the haves owe part of their ability to have to society at large for maintaining conditions in which it is possible to have and retain wealth and property is not a new one. But I don’t know that I have heard the formulation of redistribution/social safety nets as repayment of that debt before. It’s an interesting one.Report

          • And yeah, I recognize the radicalism in this concept. The weird thing about it, though, is that its practical effects on existing welfare policies would be quite incremental: since the amount of transfer from poor to rich, plus interest, is inherently impossible to calculate, it has to be left up to democratic norms. That said, I think it would have to argue for more direct redistribution rather than redistribution for specific purposes since such redistributions come with strings attached and I don’t see a moral justification for attaching strings to how a person may spend money that they were owed in the first place. But, that may be my libertarian biases infecting things a little too much – I can see how one could argue that democratic norms are also appropriate measures for figuring out the exact structure of how those repayments are to be made since the original “loan” amount is unquantifiable to begin with.Report

            • Michael Drew in reply to Mark Thompson says:

              I was actually thinking more of the potential revolution in thought that the idea might bring if widely accepted than of concrete policy changes, which I agree would be at the margins at least initially, since we do already have social safety nets, etc. of various kinds and sizes. But if the capital-holding class were truly to come to recognize that they owe a debt to society in benefitting from conditions that allow them to hold capital, and especially to the struggling classes by virtue of the fact that society grinds along on their not-well-compensated continued willingness to work for essentially as little as employers can figure out how to pay them, that could have a serious impact on prevalent social thought in the public at large.

              I mean, imagine if CNBC devoted a half-hour every morning right around the morning bell to something called “What We Owe to the Workers,” or if the Wall Street Journal ran weekly editorials or op-eds laying down in black-and-white just exactly how dependent on social stability corporate profits are, and that among the necessary policies we need to enact to preserve that is to ensure that low- and middle-income workers and their families are insured against catastrophic injury and illness, and have access to affordable routine medical care. It would be a very different world.

              (Incidentally, I agree that there is a condescension in redistribution done via specially-purposed transfers. That’s part of the reason I don’t much like vouchers as a general approach to safety nets, though they definitely have benefits of efficiency and accountability to the purpose for which the funds are appropriated. But I think you’re right to think that in a social debt conception, the condescension might be a more important consideration.)Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Freddie says:

      I worry that a lack of flourishing is seen as co-extensive with suffering and when you compound that with whether (actually, how) flourishing is relational, you’re stuck discussing whether (thing that didn’t even exist X years ago) isn’t something that a good and decent society shouldn’t make sure that every single one of The Children has.

      And the things that made us flourish X years ago are now seen as sub-standard and not as good as the stuff available now.Report

      • James in reply to Jaybird says:

        Like medicine when you’re sick?Report

        • Jaybird in reply to James says:

          Let’s name names. Bevacizumab (Avastin), sorafenib (Nexavar) and temsirolimus (Torisel).

          If you had no idea that these drugs existed, would you be happier with your bad parts?

          Let’s say that you found out that these three drugs existed… how are you feeling about your parts now?

          Does the knowledge that these drugs exist and can help extend your life despite your bad parts change your opinions on anything?

          It seems to me that, once upon a time, you had no hope. You were going to die. Stiff upper lip and all that.

          Then you find out that there *IS* a treatment out there that might help… how much does that change things?Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

            Additionally, if you are entitled to Torisel, what makes you entitled to it?

            According to a weird attitude towards property rights, it seems to me that you are entitled to Torisel if you buy Torisel.

            It seems to me that there are other philosophies out there that say people who need Torisel are entitled to Torisel due to their need of it and money has nothing to do with anything… indeed, the fact that the rich can purchase Torisel while little (insert child in need’s name here) parent’s cannot afford Torisel indicates injustice.Report

    • mike farmer in reply to Freddie says:

      What do you think we should do to get started? What do you think should be implemented as a good first trial?Report