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Apr 8, 2024 · She’s the author of Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth, a new book which argues for rational limits on how much money a single person can amass. Robeyns explains how the superrich keep everyone else poor, how large concentrations of wealth damage democracy and the environment, and how “limitarian” public policies can become a ...
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These reasons for redistribution are strongest when the poor are very badly off, as in the cases Singer describes. But there will always be some reason of this kind as long as redistributing assets increases the well-being of the poor more than it decreases that of the rich. These reasons for eliminating inequality are also based on an idea of equa...
The possibility of making the poor better off does not seem to be the only reason for seeking to reduce the worlds rising level of economic inequality. Many people in the United States seem to believe that our high and rising level of inequality is objectionable in itself, and it is worth inquiring into why this might be so. This inquiry is importa...
Second, if inequality, in itself, is something to be concerned about, we need to explain why this is so. It is easy to understand why people want to be better off than they are, especially if their current condition is very bad. But why, apart from this, should anyone be concerned with the difference between what they have and what others have? Why...
1. Economic inequality can give wealthier people an unacceptable degree of control over the lives of others.
If wealth is very unevenly distributed in a society, wealthy people often end up in control of many aspects of the lives of poorer citizens: over where and how they can work, what they can buy, and in general what their lives will be like. As an example, ownership of a public media outlet, such as a newspaper or a television channel, can give contr...
Economic inequality makes it difficult, if not impossible, to create equality of opportunity. Income inequality means that some children will enter the workforce much better prepared than others. And people with few assets find it harder to access the first small steps to larger opportunities, such as a loan to start a business or pay for an advanc...
4. Workers, as participants in a scheme of cooperation that produces national income, have a claim to a fair share of what they have helped to produce. What constitutes a fair share is of course controversial. One answer is provided by John Rawls Difference Principle, according to which inequalities in wealth and income are permissible if and only ...
Peter Singers powerful argument for altruistic giving draws on one moral relation we can stand in to others: the relation of being able to benefit them in some important way. With respect to this relation, to matter morally is to be someone whose welfare there is reason to increase.
But the objections to inequality that I have listed rest on a different moral relation. Its the relation between individuals who are participants in a cooperative scheme. Those who are related to us in this way matter morally in a further sense: they are fellow participants to whom the terms of our cooperation must be justifiable. In our current en...
These are not just objections to inequality and its consequences: they are at the same time challenges to the legitimacy of the system itself. The holdings of the rich are not legitimate if they are acquired through competition from which others are excluded, and made possible by laws that are shaped by the rich for the benefit of the rich. In thes...
T. M. Scanlon is Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard University.
Oct 3, 2023 · This article builds on these preliminary steps, exploring the normative reasons we have to worry about extreme wealth. Looking at the issues, first, through a distributive lens, we reveal that the excess wealth of the extremely wealthy compounds the injustice of inequality and insufficiency, making the situation distinctly unjust. Through a ...
Mar 6, 2024 · The effects of excessive wealth can be seen throughout US society—in the high rents resulting from private equity acquisition of housing, in tax structures, and in billionaire domination of our political system. If we are serious about narrowing the racial wealth gap, this silence needs to change. It’s time to change public policy to do ...
Apr 5, 2024 · Not only do extreme wealth gaps further entrench inequality but huge riches are often acquired by questionable means, whether that be through exploitative business practices or outright criminality.
as a normative principle, then, we provide reasons for why extreme wealth is a dis-tinctive normative problem. This, we think, provides a more fruitful perspective on the issue. We do this, first, by explaining how moral reasons to worry about eco-nomic insufficiency are transformed in the presence of extreme wealth and, second,
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Jan 29, 2024 · Why should society limit extreme personal wealth? Excess wealth keeps the poor in poverty while inequality grows. Research shows that the lion’s share of the gains that economies wield go to ...
