Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Presentation
- PART ONE BASES: CONSENSUS, FREEDOMS, AND CAPACITIES
- PART TWO OVERALL DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: ELIE (EQUAL LABOUR INCOME EQUALIZATION)
- 7 Equal labour income equalization: General presentation
- 8 Models of labour and productivity
- 9 Equal duration income equalization
- 10 Information
- 11 Income justice
- 12 General equal labour income equalization: The model
- 13 Involuntary unemployment
- PART THREE COMPARISONS WITH POLICIES AND PHILOSOPHIES
- PART FOUR THE DEGREE OF COMMUNITY, EQUALITY, RECIPROCITY, AND SOLIDARITY
- PART FIVE COMPARISON WITH ECONOMICS' SOCIAL ETHICS
- References and bibliography
- Index
11 - Income justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Presentation
- PART ONE BASES: CONSENSUS, FREEDOMS, AND CAPACITIES
- PART TWO OVERALL DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: ELIE (EQUAL LABOUR INCOME EQUALIZATION)
- 7 Equal labour income equalization: General presentation
- 8 Models of labour and productivity
- 9 Equal duration income equalization
- 10 Information
- 11 Income justice
- 12 General equal labour income equalization: The model
- 13 Involuntary unemployment
- PART THREE COMPARISONS WITH POLICIES AND PHILOSOPHIES
- PART FOUR THE DEGREE OF COMMUNITY, EQUALITY, RECIPROCITY, AND SOLIDARITY
- PART FIVE COMPARISON WITH ECONOMICS' SOCIAL ETHICS
- References and bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY
Income distribution is one of the most considered issues in judgments about overall distributive justice. These judgments often complain about income inequality and approve of its reduction. Moreover, a main tool for overall distributive justice, the income tax, is based on actual incomes and its progressivity is commonly justified as a means of reduction of inequalities in disposable incomes. This describes an ideal of equal disposable individual incomes (hence, household incomes are adjusted for family size). This ideal happens to discard a relevance of eudemonistic capacities; this is another manifestation of this general view about macrojustice (see Chapter 6).
This ideal also discards a relevance of differences in individuals' earnings for the distribution of disposable incomes. However, earnings depend on both labour and productivity. Then, these income egalitarians state that individuals' disposable incomes should not differ because of differences in productive capacities. But when it comes to the possible effects of labour, the view of most present-day income egalitarians is that someone who works more than someone else (longer, harder, at more painful or dirtier jobs, etc.) deserves a compensation for this extra work. This compensation is an extra income that compensates the painfulness of this extra labour (including foregone leisure). It a priori refers to a concept of indifference for an individual (but this is not the interindividual comparison of individual satisfactions or of their variations, which are found irrelevant for macrojustice).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- MacrojusticeThe Political Economy of Fairness, pp. 185 - 206Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004