Dialogue: Single path towards a more equitable society

MURRAY SHEARD* says that equality and fairness, far from being separate concepts, are more like themes in the same story.

Any society must grapple with how to treat people fairly.

In their recent Dialogue article, Cathy Buchanan and Peter Hartley asked what was fair, and concluded that while horizontal equality (for example, treating people as equal before the law) formed part of fairness, any policy to decrease inequality of income did not.

They oppose complete material equality as a social goal. Fair enough, so do I. But how many New Zealanders would support a 100 per cent income tax which is then redistributed equally anyway? Very few.

They appeared to be attacking a position nobody holds.

It was helpful to read that these two scholars are from Houston, a moon-mission launch site. It explained why I wondered what planet they were on. In effect, they asked us to move from believing complete equality was not a desireable social goal to believing we should not care at all about the extremes of material wellbeing in a nation.

Why should we accept this leap of logic? Some measure of equality can be one goal placed alongside other goals, such as liberty, sustainability, efficiency and rewarding merit. It is the task of voters to decide their preferred mix.

One important aspect of fairness is to treat morally similar cases equally, and morally different cases differently. Buchanan and Hartley oppose government support programmes on the grounds that they do not treat people in the same situation equally. Yet people who cannot find jobs, for example, are not in the same situation as those who can.

Support programmes for these people then, are not treating equally situated people unequally and unfairly as they claim, but are treating unequally situated people differently and fairly.

Buchanan and Hartley go on to claim that attempts to decrease inequality are motivated by envy, and leave the poor worse off. Envy is, indeed, the motive of some. But is all concern for increasing inequality a case of envy?

If current inequalities are just and fair, to challenge them would be bad form, stemming from envy or a similarly bad motive. But if such inequalities are not just and fair, those who point this out may be motivated by a concern for justice, rather than envy.

There are certainly cases of misguided compassion where attempts to help the poor actually make them worse off. There are also cases when inequality - in Buchanan and Hartley's example, through a new industry - improves the lot of the worst-off.

Yet sometimes we may choose to lessen the inequality in outcome (say, through tax) since extremes of wealth also tend to give extremes of power. When this is left unchecked, it compromises even the horizontal equality that Buchanan and Hartley advocate.

So how do we decide if a distribution is fair? One reason Buchanan and Hartley give for opposing any reduction in inequality is that rewards should be determined by merit.

In many cases, merit does justify reward. Those who work harder, or are better at a job than others, should be rewarded. But even if merit is a reason for giving a reward, it is an open question what that reward should be. We need to keep hold of at least two principles.

First, as Buchanan and Hartley believe, effort and the fruits of the talents of individuals can be an appropriate basis for rewards, which may well include profits and high incomes. Second, no one willing to engage in meaningful work but unable to find it should be unduly penalised by rewards granted under the first principle.

Inequitable effects on others; effects that decrease others' chances, are an integral part of determining what is a deserved reward.

The rationale for individual incomes and private property is first of all to enable people to meet their own basic needs.

Sensitivity to the ability of those in that society to meet their own needs is built in to any defensible account of private property. What counts as a fair reward depends not only on the value of what a person produces, To their credit, Buchanan and Hartley admit human need is relevant to fairness, but they miss the implications. More is needed than sustenance levels of food and clothing.

Not being barred from meaningful participation in society is a requirement of justice, and so this counts as a need. Those without a minimum of education and the means to earn a basic income are barred from participating meaningfully in society.

This should also give us impetus to think that a concern for reducing inequality is very much part of the story of fairness.

* Murray Sheard teaches ethics and social philosophy at the University of Auckland.