Problems with supply-side egalitarianism
Abstract
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis want to redirect egalitarianism away from redistribution of income and toward redistribution of assets, particularly productive assets. <1> Their main reason, apart from the fact that income redistribution is so obviously dead in the political waters, is that income redistribution lowers productivity and competitiveness, while asset redistribution raises these, and in the long run the welfare of the worst-off depends more on increasing productivity than it does on distribution. Compound interest is a wonderful thing. Young workers in an inegalitarian society growing at 5% per year making half the wages of those in an egalitarian society growing at 1/2% per year will catch up in 16 years and by the time of their retirement will have four times the income. Bowles and Gintis argue that such mathematics, which has long been an argument for inegalitarian trickle-down policies, in fact supports egalitarian asset redistributions.Author's Profile
My notes
Similar books and articles
Egalitarianism Reconsidered.Daniel M. Hausman & Matt Sensat Waldren - 2011 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 8 (4):567-586.
Relocating the responsibility cut: Should more responsibility imply less redistribution?Alexander W. Cappelen & Bertil Tungodden - 2006 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 5 (3):353-362.
Egalitarianism and welfare-state redistribution.Daniel Shapiro - 2002 - Social Philosophy and Policy 19 (1):1-35.
Why libertarianism is mistaken.Hugh LaFollette - 1979 - In John Arthur & William Shaw (eds.), Justice and Economic Distribution (2nd). Prentice-Hall.
Supply‐side vs. demand‐side tax cuts and U.S. economic growth, 1951–2004.Norton Garfinkle - 2005 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 17 (3-4):427-448.
Analytics
Added to PP
2009-01-28
Downloads
46 (#256,549)
6 months
1 (#451,398)
2009-01-28
Downloads
46 (#256,549)
6 months
1 (#451,398)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Establishing a Chinese Theory of Social Justice.Yao Yang - 2006 - Contemporary Chinese Thought 38 (1):15-51.