Political Philosophy by Adam Swift

Author:Adam Swift [Swift, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Positional goods

There are some goods for which it might not make sense to think in difference principle terms at all. For them, there may be no way that inequality could tend to improve the position of the worst off. These will be goods where the only way to give more to some is to give less to others. In the case of money, it is of course true that, at any particular moment in time, the way to optimize the position of the poor would be to redistribute what the rich have up to the point of equality. But this would be a rather short-term view. A better way to help the poor in the long term could be to permit those inequalities that serve to increase the size of the pie. There might be some goods where this kind of thinking does not apply.

Think about equality of opportunity in relation to the education system. Suppose some universities are better than others, and consider the distribution of opportunities to get a place at one of the better ones. Could an unequal distribution of those increase the opportunities of those who have least opportunity? If middle-class children have a better chance than those from working-class homes, then the latter have a worse chance than the former. It is hard to see how this inequality could improve the chances of the working-class children. Because there is a competition for places, one cannot give more to some without giving less to others, and that inequality cannot lead to an increase in the amount available to those who have less. No trickle-down – or pie-expansion – story can be told in this case. The only way to improve the chances of working-class children is to reduce the chances of their middle-class counterparts. This is a problem for politicians, who don’t like to be seen to be making things worse for anybody. The great thing about economic growth is that it allows politicians to fudge distributive issues. While the pie is expanding, everybody can be getting better off. This may apply in some areas. But it does not apply in all.

We can, of course, expand the number of places in higher education. The US federal government did exactly this in the 1950s and 1960s, and more recently the UK government has followed suit. Though this may increase the chances of working-class children getting to university, it won’t necessarily increase their chances of getting to university relative to the chances of middle-class children. (Remember, we’re interested in equality of opportunity.) Perhaps the expansion will be disproportionately taken up by middle-class children. And it won’t necessarily increase their chances of going to one of the better universities. But going to a better university – rather than just going to university at all – may be particularly important. Here’s why.

Education is a funny good because it has both intrinsic and positional aspects. In some ways, education is valuable intrinsically, without reference to the amount of it that others have.

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