Chance, Merit, and Economic Inequality: Rethinking Distributive Justice and the Principle of Desert

252 Pages·2020·3.175 MB·English

by  Joseph de la Torre Dwyer

Chance, Merit,
and Economic
Inequality
Rethinking Distributive Justice
and the Principle of Desert
Joseph de la Torre Dwyer
Chance, Merit, and Economic Inequality
Joseph de la Torre Dwyer
Chance, Merit,
and Economic
Inequality
Rethinking Distributive Justice and the Principle
of Desert
JosephdelaTorreDwyer
IndependentScholar
Brooklyn,NY,USA
ISBN978-3-030-21125-7 ISBN978-3-030-21126-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21126-4
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FortheUnlucky
PREFACE
Sectionsofthisbookthatbeginwith“***”maybeskippedbutwillbeof
interesttospecialists.
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has greatly benefited from the efforts of many individuals. I
would like to thank the participants in the 85th Southern Economics
Association Annual Meeting who responded helpfully to early versions
of Chaps.2 and 13, the Book Club that allowed me to foist upon them
an early version of Chap.1 and still provided valuable suggestions and
encouragement,theInterlibraryLoanstaffattheBrooklynPublicLibrary
who aided me in obtaining many important source materials, Sam Smit’s
assistanceinatimeofneed,theanonymousrefereeswhoseriouslyengaged
withmyworktohelpmebetterseetheproject’sstrengthsandweaknesses
and radically improve its substance, Ben Pauli and Albert Castle for
providingcarefulreadingandilluminatingfeedback,Papaforreadingthe
entiredraftandofferingsomesharpquestions,andMyLoveforgenerously
supporting me through this entire process, reading numerous versions of
every fledglingand final chapter, and helpingme to ever better refine the
textintermsofclarityandcontent.
COLOPHON
The data analyses (and the book itself) rely upon R version 3.5.3 (2019-
03-11). Major R packages used in the data analyses (and the book)
include R-base, bookdown, rmarkdown, knitr, packrat, ProjectTemplate,
devtools,lodown,psidR,data.table,psych,car,mice,AER,splitstackshape,
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
fitdistrplus,caret,mgcv,Hmisc,tseries,IC2,ineq,reldist,ggdag,plyr,and
MASS.1 Thecompletesourceisavailableatjustdeserts.org.
Finally, I owe a word of explanation and apology to specialists on any part
ofmyenormoussubject.Itisobviouslyimpossibletoknowasmuchabout
every[subject]ascanbeknown...by[those]whosefieldislesswide.…On
suchgroundsIasktheindulgenceofthosereaderswhofindmyknowledge
ofthisorthatportionofmysubjectlessadequatethanitwouldhavebeen
iftherehadbeennoneedtoremember‘time’swingedchariot.’—Bertrand
Russell,TheHistoryofWesternPhilosophy,Preface
Copyright©2019
1RCoreTeam(2019);Xie(2018a,b);Allaireetal.(2018);Usheyetal.(2018);White
(2018); Wickham et al. (2018); Damico (2019); Oswald (2018); Dowle and Srinivasan
(2018);Revelle(2018);Foxetal.(2018);vanBuurenandGroothuis-Oudshoorn(2018);
KleiberandZeileis(2017);Mahto(2018);Delignette-Mulleretal.(2018);JedWingetal.
(2018); Wood (2018); Harrell (2018); Trapletti and Hornik (2018); Plat (2012); Zeileis
(2014);Handcock(2016);Barrett(2018);Wickham(2016);andRipley(2018).
CONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
PartI JustPrinciples 9
2 TheDieIsCast:Chance, Merit,andInequality 11
2.1 OutofControl 12
2.2 ResponsibilitybyDegrees 18
2.3 ***Implications,Objections,andRebuttals 32
2.4 TheMysteriousSeatofMoralResponsibility 38
2.5 InSum,ThisChapterHasArgued 44
3 AutonomyandDesert 47
3.1 NarrowlyDefineDesert 48
3.2 DesertIsOnePrincipleAmongMany 49
3.3 TheDesert-BasisRevisited 58
3.4 Chance,Merit,andInequality 63
3.5 TheLotteryYouCan’tRefuse 64
3.6 ***Implications,Objections,andRebuttals 67
3.7 InSum,ThisChapterHasArgued 77
xi
xii CONTENTS
PartII JustStatesofAffairs 79
4 Equal Opportunity and JustDeserts: Better Late than
Before 81
4.1 Equal Opportunity and Just Deserts: Leveling
thePlayingField 83
4.2 Forewords,Afterwords,andtheWordsBetween 86
4.3 HindsightIs20/20 93
4.4 InSum,ThisChapterHasArgued 96
5 EfficiencyandJustDeserts:Economists’BigTrade-Off 97
5.1 EfficiencyandJustDeserts 97
5.2 EconomicRentsandEfficiency 99
5.3 Lump-SumsandEndowments 102
5.4 Lump-SumEndowmentTaxes:Introduction 108
5.5 InSum,ThisChapterHasArgued 113
6 Liberty and JustDeserts: Slaves, Dynasties, and Moral
Agents 115
6.1 Lump-Sum Endowment Taxes: Liberal Critique
Rejected 116
6.2 LibertyandJustDeserts:DynastiesandAgents 119
6.3 AgentsandLiberty 122
6.4 InSum,ThisChapterHasArgued 129
PartIII JustPublicPolicies 131
7 EconomyandDesert 133
7.1 EconomyandDesert 134
7.2 FixedOutcome 138
7.3 InSum,ThisChapterHasArgued 140