Week 2 Flashcards
(38 cards)
Distributive justice
What is a fair way to distribute our
limited material resources?
Egalitarianism
- Everyone gets the same
- Seems unfair if some people produce more or
work harder - Some might need more than others
- Might be inefficient
Rawls’ difference principle
- Inequality is justified if it makes life better for
the poorest - Does relative position matter? What does a
billionaire class or aristocracy do to cohesion? - Is it fair? Don’t people who work harder and
produce more deserve more?
Equality of opportunity
Differences in outcome are acceptable
when they stem from choices for which
individuals can be fairly held responsible.
* Levelling the playing field
* What kinds of things can we consider?
* Differences by race and gender?
* Different family circumstances?
* Different natural abilities?
* Different personal motivations?
Utilitarianism
- Maximize ‘preference satisfaction’ – people
getting what they want - Seems ok for an individual, but for a group it
might violate ‘commonsense morality’, e.g.
racial oppression if this makes many racists
very happy - Requires ‘apples and oranges’ comparisons
Just deserts
- Different ways of thinking about this:
- People get out of society what they
contribute to society - People are rewarded for effort
- People are compensated for costs
incurred - Only effort directed towards
increasing the size of the pie warrants
a larger slice of the pie - Is this fair if there are unequal
opportunities to contribute?
Libertarianism
- If we achieve justice in acquisition and
transfer of property, then the final
distribution, whatever it might be, is
inherently just - Original acquisition of property rarely just
- People may accumulate wealth through
luck or without contributing - Does not treat taxation as legitimate
Feminist critiques
- Gender is an important consideration
because differences are not entirely social –
as long biological parents raise children in
family units, differences will exist - Do we take a liberal position? Minimal role of
government in the economic sphere only? - Do we ask government to be more active in
redistributing wealth? - Do we give the state a more robust role in
personal lives, e.g. reorganizing ‘the family’?
Defining poverty
Our working definition
Not enough material resources
* Focus on material resources – other
forms of deprivation (e.g. social status,
political power, opportunity, freedom etc.)
are explanatory
* What counts as ‘enough’?
* Basic standard of living – ‘absolute
poverty’
* Comparison to others in society – ‘relative
poverty’
* A reasonable standard of living – a hybrid
of concepts
Poverty may be a problem for distributive
justice:
- Egalitarianism – it is unacceptable if some
are rich and some are poor - Rawls’ difference principle – we must strive
to lift up the poorest
Poverty and distributive justice
Poverty may not always be a problem for
distributive justice
- Equal opportunity – what if the poor squandered
good opportunities? - Just deserts – what if people choose poverty
over effort? - Utilitarianism – what if some need to be poor for
the collective good? - Libertarianism – what if poverty results from just
acquisition and transfers of property?
Poverty and inequality in Australia
ACOSS / UNSW report measures
Relative rates
* 50% of median
* 60% of median
* Adjusts for household composition
Different poverty lines for singles vs. couples, with children vs without children
Causes of poverty
Individual explanations
Individuals are unable or unwilling to
participate in the market economy
* Job seeking support
* Budgeting and financial literacy
support
* Education and training
* Incentivise work (and punish failure
to work)
Individual explanations
Who do these explanations work for?
* The poor?
* Practitioners?
* Policy makers?
Causes of poverty
Cultural and behavioural explanations
Shared non-productive values
* Poor communities where not working
becomes normalised
* Underclass
* Welfare dependency
* Cycle of deprivation and
intergenerational poverty
Causes of poverty
Cultural and behavioural explanations cont…
Shared non-productive values
* Early intervention (i.e. early in the life
course)
* Mutual obligation
* Paradoxical removal of welfare
Cultural and behavioural explanations
Who does this explanation work for?
* The poor?
* Practitioners?
* Policy makers?
Cultural and behavioural explanations
Causes of Poverty
Structural explanations
The way society is organised produces
poverty for some.
* E.g. there is an inverse relationship
between inflation (devaluation of
money) and unemployment – the
Phillips Curve
* There is a ‘natural’ rate of
unemployment
The way society is organised produces
poverty for some.
* E.g. the labour market
* Cost of labour determined by supply
and demand
* What if equilibrium is below living
standards?
* What if we introduce a minimum wage?
Structural explanations
- Economy is complex!
- All sorts of policies and events can
affect the economy and generate or
reduce poverty
Structural explanations
Discourses
about poverty
Poverty and blame
- Individual explanations are intuitive
- Humans have self-serving cognitive biases
- If I’m successful, it must be because of my own hard
work - If my outcome is fair, life must be fair
- Therefore, people who are poor caused their own
poverty - Easy to confuse cause and effect in cultural
explanations - Poor neighbourhoods are filled with crime and
violence, therefore poor people are deviant - Poor people use drugs and alcohol, therefore poor
people lack moral character - Poor people lack education, therefore poor people are
stupid
Deserving poor
Those who are obviously blameless
* Children
* Disabled
* Sick
* Elderly
* DV victims
Deserving poor
Undeserving poor
Everyone else
Characterised as
* Lazy
* Stupid
* Immoral, deviant, criminal
* Dirty
* Bad parents
Undeserving poor
Privilege of wealth
Discourses of poverty and welfare colour
interpretations of facts
* Cultural explanations of poverty
* Individual explanations of poverty
* Personal responsibility
* The poor are visible and scrutinised
* The poor are subject to surveillance
Images of poverty
- Emotive?
- Powerful?
- Engender sympathy?
- Perhaps useful for raising awareness
and advocating for change? - Or do they just reinforce neo-liberal
discourses? - Reinforce neo-liberal discourses
- Literally and morally unclean people
- Children the focus as deserving poor
- Isolated and excluded
- Poverty and parenting
- These images may do more harm than
good.
Approaches to welfare
Social democratic welfare states
State provides what citizens need:
* Education, health, housing, money
- Concerned with wealth distribution
- Democratic – politically and socially
Capitalist:
* Markets are constructed
* Markets should be regulated
* Unions are necessary
- Interventions into private sphere
accepted - Examples - Scandinavia
Approaches to welfare
(Contemporary) libertarianism
- Private individual rights – especially
property - State not legitimate
- Freedom from rather than freedom to
- Hostile to state intervention especially tax
- Prefer
- Private sector and private charity
- Markets (natural and good)
- User-pays
- Examples – Republican Tea Party
Approaches to welfare
(Neo)Liberal welfare
Legitimate role for the state but also
individualism and self reliance
* Government’s role is to create conditions
for citizens to flourish in the market
* “A hand up; not a hand out”
- Fund services that improve economic
conditions e.g. education - Welfare is a safety net for temporary
periods of disconnection from labour
market
Concern about how welfare will affect
markets:
* Remove incentive to work
* Distort cost of labour
* Inflexibility in the labour market
* Welfare traps
* Demographic change – aging population
* A burden for working citizens
* Distorts markets where private enterprise
must compete with public organisations
- Empirical evidence suggests valid but
often overstated concerns - Generous with welfare connected to
work (occupational and fiscal) - Those who earn the most are assumed
to be the most productive and can
therefore be rewarded by welfare - The main goal of welfare is to shift
people into the labour market
Examples
* Australia
* USA
* UK
* NZ
* Canada
* Note: both parties in Australia are neo-
liberal
* Since the 80s we have a neo-liberal
consensus
