- 09 Mar 2013 00:46
#14189522
If I have understood John Rawls's "Difference Principle" correctly it is that inequality of wealth, for instance, is not a bad thing per se, so long as the least well off benefit. That is, everyone must benefit but not necessarily by equal amounts.
In other words, if the richest 1% see an increase in their wealth, say, by a factor of 5 and the poorest 1% also see an increase in their wealth, however, by a smaller factor, say, 1.5 - then this scenario ought to be, according to Rawls, a-okay.
Thus, it appears to me that Rawlsian liberals, qua Rawlsian, shouldn't care about the magnitude of inequality, or how big the gini coefficient of the country is, so long as the "the least advantaged in society materially better off than they would be under strict equality".
Is this a fair interpretation of Rawls's "Difference Principle"?
Stanford Encyclopedia on Philsophy's entry on Distributive Justice wrote:The Difference Principle permits diverging from strict equality so long as the inequalities in question would make the least advantaged in society materially better off than they would be under strict equality.
In other words, if the richest 1% see an increase in their wealth, say, by a factor of 5 and the poorest 1% also see an increase in their wealth, however, by a smaller factor, say, 1.5 - then this scenario ought to be, according to Rawls, a-okay.
Thus, it appears to me that Rawlsian liberals, qua Rawlsian, shouldn't care about the magnitude of inequality, or how big the gini coefficient of the country is, so long as the "the least advantaged in society materially better off than they would be under strict equality".
Is this a fair interpretation of Rawls's "Difference Principle"?
"We fight for and against not men and things as they are, but for and against the caricatures we make of them."
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