On how society can function

Yale economist John Roemer has tried to come up with a way to make the distribution of resouces in the world, inter alia, more sensitive to choice and less sensitive to circumstances. This, incidentally, is one way, I believe, to bring about a more just society without much in the way disincentive effects, even if you believe monetary incentives are very important for productivity/effiecncy.

On his proposal, society would decide on a list of factors which are matters of circumstance rather than choice: e.g. age, gender, race, disability, and economic class and education level of one's parents. we then divide people into groups or 'types' based on thes factors. For example, one type would be 40-year old able-bodied white males whose parents were middle class and college educated; another type would consist of 40-year old able bodied black women whose parents recieved only primary education and were poor.

Now, within each type, people will vary dramatically in their income or wealth. Within the group of 40-year-old able-bodied white males whose parents were college educated (call them type A), most persons might earn around $70,000, with the top 10 percent earning $125,000 and the bottom 10 percent earning under $40,000. We assume that such inequalities within type A are due primarily to the choices people make. Since all members of type A share the same basic socio-economic and demographic circumstances, the inequalities we see within this group are likely to reflect different decisions about work, leisure, training, consumption, risk, and so on. So we will not seek to redistribute resources withing type A: we assume that the distributions within types are broadly ambition-sensitive: hard working and prudent white males of educated parents are not forced to 'subsidize' the choices of comarable white males with expensive tastes for leisure, or irresponsible habits.

Similarly, there will be considerable variation in income within the group of 40-year old black women from less-educated parents (call them type B). Perhaps the average income in this group is around $20,000, with the top 10 per cent earning $33,000, and the bottom 10 % earning 10,000. As before, hard-working and prudent black women should not be subsidizing the expensive or imprudent tastes of other black women.

So we accept for the sake of public policy that inequalities between types are ambition-sensitive. However, notice that there are enormous inequalities between types A and B, and these, by hypothesis at least, are due to circumstances not choices. Hard-working and prudent members at the 90th percentile of type A earn three as much as hard-working and prudent members at the 90th percentile of type B. That inequality cannot be explained or justified in terms of choices. People should be rewarded for above-average levels of work or prudence, but there is no reason why members of type A who exhibit these characteristics should be rewarded three times more than members of type B who exhibit the same characteristics.

Similarly, compare the reckless and indolent white male at teh 10th percentile of type A who earns four times as much as teh reckless and indolent black female at the 10th percentile of type B. People should pay for their choices, and so reckless and indolent people should accept that they will do less well than others who are prudent and hard working. But there is no reason why the costs of these imprudent decisions should be four times harsher for members of type B that for type A.

The goal of an 'egalitarian planner', therefore, is to accept inequality within types, but to equalize across types. thus everyone at the 90th percentile their type should have the same income, no matter what type they belong to; similarly at the 50th percentile or 10th percentile.. This will ensure that people are held responsible for their choices: hard-working and prudent members of each type will do much better than members with expensive or impudent tastes. But we will have neutralized the impact of the most important unchoosen circumstances; and incentives to productivity are not dramtically reduced.

For the sake of the reader, This summary draws very heavily on the summary of it found in the 2nd edition of Will Kymlicka's outstanding "Contemporary Political Philosophy", perhaps the best introduction to the subject in existensce, written by a highly distingusihed political theorist, btw.

If you are interested further in this, last time I checked, Roemer had links to more articles about this and related topics on his website, although some are largely technical in nature. Also, check out his book "Equality of Opportunity", (Harvard UP, 1998) for a more detailed explanation.