International Relations Theory Today by Ken Booth Toni Erskine & Toni Erskine

Author:Ken Booth,Toni Erskine & Toni Erskine
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509508341
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2016-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

Pogge’s (ambivalent) right to a share

Thomas Pogge’s work exemplifies a relatively strong claim for global redistribution (Gauri and Sonderholm 2012). Not unlike Smith, Pogge pleads for attention to vast global and national inequalities, especially the conditions of those living in ‘extreme’ or ‘severe poverty’. But, unlike Smith, he embraces strong public action, proposing a global resource dividend (GRD) – a tax on states’ use or sale of resources – dedicated to assuring that ‘all human beings can meet their own basic needs with dignity.’ For Pogge, the GRD is the least we can do, given that the ‘global poor own an inalienable stake in all limited natural resources.’ This stake does not give the poor a vote in how states use resources; it serves only to guarantee a ‘share of the economic value of the resource in question’ to everyone (Pogge 2002: 196–7).

Pogge (2002: 2, 205) envisions a 1 per cent tax on aggregate global income, which would produce enough to ‘eradicate severe poverty worldwide’ at an insignificant cost. Notably, he sees ending extreme poverty as but the most minimal notion of what it would mean to address global inequalities, which would include attention to the relative deprivation that pervades all aspects of social and cultural life and leaves many perpetually at the bottom of society (ibid.: 198). But we must begin somewhere. Pogge proposes starting with a surcharge of $2 per barrel of crude oil extracted worldwide, increasing the cost of fuel to consumers by only 5 cents per gallon. Envisioned this way, the GRD infringes minimally on the sovereignty of states and consumers. States may do as they will with their resources, but not all revenue generated from those resources belongs to the state or the private actors authorised to exploit them. Some would go to what in effect is a world authority. It is possible, then, ‘to eradicate world hunger within a few years’ and ‘without major changes to our global economic order’ (ibid.: 205–6).

It is important for Pogge (2002: 207) that his scheme not be tied to generosity or aid (i.e., charity), which, in our view, he correctly ties to donor arrogance, the fickleness or narrowness of donors’ interests, the stigma of handouts, and receiver dependence. Rather, the GRD dividend must be claimed as a right.

Two questions emerge immediately: What is the basis of this right? And, given Pogge’s compelling argument – what one sympathetic critic (Gould 2007: 381) calls a ‘masterful’ presentation – why are we not already there?

Pogge addresses the first directly and the second implicitly in three steps. First, his tax on resources assumes that the world’s population shares a single resource base from which the affluent have benefited and from which the poor have been excluded. We are sympathetic to this claim. However, this asymmetric benefit and exclusion need not be seen as a violation of rights, since it results from the distribution of property rights, as Smith understood. Indeed, it need not be seen as a problem at all, as we find in libertarians Naverson and Hayek below.

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.