Ethics of Wealth Gap

By mon couer, to whom I dedicate this article.

Much modern social justice advocacy is centered around wealth gaps between groups and what we ought to do about them. Gaps between races and sexes in particular are of utmost concern within these groups. I find many foundational beliefs underpinning these concerns to be dubious, yet I find many of their conclusions to be correct. Thus, I will myself become an advocate for a more nuanced and thoughtful approach to wealth gaps that will allow us to tackle the real issues at hand.

The General View on Wealth Gaps

The narrative for why we ought to abolish wealth gaps goes as follows. There are two groups, A and B, that are easily distinguishable and have had critically different experiences throughout time. We have lived in a society where group A has oppressed group B for some extended amount of time, likely millennia. Thus group B is at a strict disadvantage to group A because the latter have a head start (either from inheritance or social norms). Not only that, but discrimination (in some less severe but still notable form) persists to this day. Therefore, even if group B had no history of discrimination there would still be a problem. But most notably, they would also have a problem if people in group B were no longer discriminated against because of the history of oppression. This all culminates most clearly in the massive wealth gap between both groups.

Let me tackle the former claim before we broach the latter. The claim is that if people in group B are discriminated against unduly, then we ought to ameliorate the situation. This is clearly true. I, and most people, think this is inherently evident. Sure, we may have some quibbles about specific definitions like “unduly” but the conception at hand is agreeable.¹

One discussion to be had in the meaning of unduly is whether we ought to be able to discriminate based on immutable characteristics relevant for performing a job. There is already a substantial amount of discourse on that topic, so our time would be better spent where there is an attention vacuum.

Therefore, the critical question today is what part history plays in this discussion. This is especially important given that history is easier to cite as an argument rather than contemporary discrimination. This is because actual instances of discrimination can be difficult to gather good data on (since discrimination requires intent) while the historical narratives are well known.

The question is thus: ought we to consider it unethical that current members of group B are in a worse position because of the transgressions of ancestors in group A? This question is about whether said situation, like the discrimination one, is a problem in and of itself. Such a situation does not clearly apply to issues regarding sex because the defining characteristic is not inheritable. One could argue that history is relevant because it establishes sexist social norms, but they only care about those because of the current discrimination and not the history per se. This could also be applied to height, hair color, eye color, etcetera because they are easily distinguishable, except that these lack historical injustices and discrimination. The primary application of this question is racial categories. Those in A could be those who are socially defined as white and those in B could be those identified as black, but this is just the most obvious/relevant/discussed example in an American context.

I do not want to relegate our groups to just white and black people, as the arguments I will put forward are more general. For instance, Native Americans in the United States are also in a poorer condition because of past oppression. Not only that, but relegation to just whites as the oppressors also muddles the waters when it comes to “positive” discrimination from the majority group (e.g. stereotypes about Asians being intelligent).²

For generalization, I will call group A those who benefit from their inheritable trait, i.e. the beneficiaries. And likewise, those from group B will be those harmed by their inheritable trait, i.e. the harmed.

The Poor Grounding for the Immorality of Wealth Gaps

Let us suppose that, for the current project or any general standpoint, we are only concerned with historical instances of discrimination and not any current injustices. The view would then be thus, the beneficiaries have an advantage that the harmed do not because of their ancestors. Thereby the idea of reparations seems to be an obvious strategy for ameliorating the station of the harmed. And this is where I think most let their thinking stagnate; instead we should further analyze what this view entails.

Reparations would require that the harmed be given some material compensation. This material would naturally have to be taken exclusively from the beneficiaries, as otherwise it would not be reparations. Therefore, the beneficiaries would have to be punished for their inherited trait which, intuitively, ought to be avoided. The natural retort would be that they are not being picked out for their trait but instead because of the actions of their immoral ancestors. But this position would also require a questionable judgment: punishing people for their ancestors. It is far from obvious that people should be beholden to their ancestor’s crimes (or virtues for that matter). In fact, I think this view can be discarded due to reductio ad absurdum because of the complete oddities that it implies. If my great-grandfather murdered yours, would you think I was at fault? If my great-great-grandmother insulted yours, would I be culpable? I think the only intuitive response to these questions is “Not at all.”

Thus trying to undo historical injustices, in and of itself, is unethical. Unlike stopping the harm caused by current discrimination, fixing bygone injustices should not be sought as an inherent good. Before moving on, I would like to clear up a few facets of this view. First, if the perpetrator of the discrimination is still alive then the injustice is not historical and thus ought to be corrected. This is still true if the victim is dead as the descendants of victims could very well have been impacted.³

Second, in specific regards to racism, note that only a modicum of the institutional racism framework must be ameliorated to accord with this view. Institutional racism as a concept relies on history to inform us on the nature of current discriminatory practices. One must not view these historical instances as problems to be solved but instead as information on how current racist systems function. These contemporary instances of discrimination are all we should concern ourselves with. Now that I have shown the improper view on the purpose of reparations, I would like to reveal better reasons to advocate for reparations.

The Proper Grounding for the Immorality of Wealth Gaps

Reparations for the point of reparations are an injustice, but this can be resolved if we can point to some desired end. First, let us revisit how modern discrimination fits into inequality. I find it apparent that in a perfect world we could have inequality without discrimination. In this hypothetical world, any given inequality between two groups would either be due to biological differences (possibly relevant for sex wealth gaps) and historical injustices (possibly relevant for genetically inheritable wealth gaps). And in this world, I think these forms of wealth equality could be justified. It is not difficult to imagine arguments for unequal treatment of people who are biologically distinguished (healthcare, sports, etcetera.)

Yet, we do not live in this bigotry-free world. Discrimination persists; so what role do wealth gaps play in that? Let us return to our groups A and B. Note that when I introduced them, I clarified that they are “easily distinguishable.” This is critical! And to see why, we simply need to analyze stereotypes. Stereotyping is a specific subset of the generally helpful strategies that humans use to understand the world. When we get stung by a bee and feel that pain, we then associate that pain with all bees in perpetuity. This emanates from our discretification of the world and generalization of properties onto these discrete ideas.

We take all these different organisms and make them one discrete group called “bees.” Once this is done, when a member of this group hurts us we adjust our view of all bees because of its belonging to that group. Now, we are a bit more complex than that given that sometimes we know not to generalize. For instance if the bee starts to talk, we will not generalize that trait because we view talking as atypical for bees. Regardless, one can see discretification and generalization together allow us to furnish a greater understanding of the world. Yet when we apply these tools to people, we call this stereotyping and any proposed utility becomes (rightfully) morally cloudy.

Let us then attempt to define discrimination in terms of these explored concepts:

Discrimination is an unappreciated application of a stereotype.⁴

Given this definition, we can now make progress on the initial issue. Given that groups A and B are distinguishable, we can easily identify and label them as belonging to their respective discrete groups. This ease of discretification allows generalizations to be applied more easily. When we see someone committing a crime and all we can tell about them is that they belong to group A, that is one of the only generalizations that we will make. And suppose that the criminal also liked pandas, we would not make the generalization that “people who like pandas are more likely to commit crime.” This ease of identifiability is on a spectrum with race and sex being the most and arbitrary personal beliefs being the least.

Let us then ponder how this applies to wealth gaps. Let us suppose that there was a wealth gap between those who like pandas and those who do not. First, the odds that this wealth gap would ever be noticed is incredibly small given the difficulty in discretizing masses of individuals into their respective groups. Even if we did, depending on the size of the wealth gap we may decide we do not care. But let us suppose this wealth gap is massive and noticed, then society would transform to make liking or disliking pandas an apparent trait by making it normative to reveal your relevant preference.⁵

Now how does this apply to the wealth gaps we actually care about? Let us think about groups A and B where the former is much wealthier, on average, then the latter. Let us assume there are significant correlates of poverty like lack of education, criminality, etcetera. This lack of education comes from wealth making it possible to get superior education and criminality because lack of wealth can be a reason to commit crime. This means that when people see those they deem as less intelligent or more violent, they are more likely to be in group B than the average person is to be in group B. And since being in group B is an easily identifiable trait, this will naturally lead the average person to generalize these negative traits onto group B. This is the problem with wealth gaps, they breed negative stereotypes and their resulting acts of discrimination.

Ethics of Wealth Gaps

We have refined the relevant ethical considerations of wealth gaps. Historical narratives ought not to be considered morally important for our considerations about wealth gaps. Instead, wealth gaps between easily distinguishable groups should be erased because of the hatred they foster. In practice for racial wealth gaps in particular, this means that reparation advocacy should not take the form of a righteous “We want to right the wrongs of slavery!” Instead, it should be a practical plea to combat human weakness in the form of “We need to reduce racial wealth gaps because they worsen society.”

I hope this article was illuminating by providing some insights on how and why we should care about wealth gaps. If you have any critiques or responses, please let me know.