An Introduction to Economic Inequality by Eamonn Butler

Author:Eamonn Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
Published: 2022-06-27T10:16:43+00:00

The roots of equalisation policy

From ethics to politics

Further problems arise when moral ideas, backed by questionable statistics, morph into political programmes. Moral ideas are about how we would like people to be; political policies force them to be something. That is a big difference.

False assumptions. Our natural, cultural and religious feelings of fairness lead many people to assume that equality is the only moral situation; and too often they rely on questionable statistics and loaded terms to reinforce that assumption. And since private charity (focused on poverty, not equality) is not up to the job of equalising everyone, the further presumption is that government must do it, by force.

Underlying this is a presumption that individuals are not responsible for their economic position; that inequality is created by society; and that the poor are victims of circumstance while the rich are undeserving manipulators. But this narrative overlooks the importance of factors such as hard work, ambition, skill-acquisition, willpower and resilience in determining where people end up in terms of incomes and wealth.

Justifying redistribution. To some academics, the equality narrative provides the justification (or possibly the veneer) for moving from ethical thought to political action. To governments, it suggests a way to defuse people’s envy and provides the grounds for political intervention.

Hence the demands for a political programme to equalise any differences that do not actively promote the collective good. That treats humans in depersonalised terms, as if they exist only to serve some social end, selected by the authorities. And it makes ethical ideas (about how we live our lives) serve political ideas (about how we should serve others). But ethics should inform politics, not the other way round.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.