Kristi A. Olson asks: What is a fair income distribution? She rejects equal income shares: equal pay undercompensates workers in dangerous and onerous jobs. The envy test, which takes both income and work into account, fares better. Yet, a distribution in which no one prefers someone else's circumstances to her own-as the envy test requires-is unlikely to exist, and even when it does exist, the normative connection between envy and fairness has not been established. After critiquing existing answers, Olson invokes the idea of mutual justifiability: when someone claims that her situation should be improved at someone else's expense, she must be able to give a reason that cannot be reasonably rejected by a free and equal individual who regards everyone else as the same. To give the answer bite, Olson distinguishes two types of envy. Reasons based on personal envy can be reasonably rejected; reasons based on impersonal envy cannot. Olson then tests the solidarity solution against the theories of Ronald Dworkin, Philippe Van Parijs, and Marc Fleurbaey and applies it directly to the concrete issues of the gender wage gap and taxation. By providing a new approach to problems of fair resource allocation, The Solidarity Solution establishes philosophical discussion as critical to today's fight to end economic injustice.
As both the leftist political philosopher G.A. Cohen and the conservative economist Milton Friedman have pointed out, equal income is unfair to the hardworking. The ideal tax system-the one used to evaluate actual tax systems-would thus adjust taxation and redistribution for differential labor burdens. Measuring labor burdens, however, is no easy task. Some philosophers and economists attempt to sidestep the measurement problem by invoking envy-freeness. A distribution is envy-free when no one prefers someone else's bundle of goods (or bads) to her own. Yet, eliminating envy in the labor market is not always possible, and minimizing envy when it cannot be eliminated is not always fair. The Solidarity Solution provides an answer: fair labor-income bundles are those that could be justified to free and equal individuals. Part one develops the solidarity solution by showing how rigorous distributive implications can be derived from a relational ideal. Part two uses the solidarity solution to critique the competing theories of fair income distributions of Ronald Dworkin, Philippe Van Parijs, and Marc Fleurbaey. Finally, part three identifies implications for the gender wage gap and taxation"--
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