Review of The Inheritance of Wealth (Oxford University Press, 2018) by Daniel Halliday

Below is my review of Daniel Halliday's excellent book, written for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. (This version corrects note 5, which is incomplete at NDPR.) 

 

Halliday, Daniel. The Inheritance of Wealth: Justice, Equality, and the Right to Bequeath.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 256. $42.95 (hardcover). ISBN: 9780198803355

  

A significant obstacle to the realization of the free and equal status of all citizens within democratic societies is the inheritance of wealth—or more precisely, the intergenerational accumulation and transfer of wealth within families. The extreme wealth inequality caused by flows of inheritances can render a de jure democratic society a de facto aristocracy, wherein individuals’ life-prospects are determined largely by the economic class into which they are born. Because of this, liberal egalitarian justice demands limits on inheritances. John Rawls, for instance, recommends that intergenerational bequeathments and gifts be taxed, so that individuals can acquire only limited amounts of wealth through such processes over the course of their lifetimes.[1]

 

Rawls’s treatment of inheritance is quite brief, and there has been little discussion of the topic by other egalitarian philosophers over the two decades since the publication of Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. This is surprising, given our “new Gilded Age” of extreme wealth inequality.[2] Thankfully, Daniel Halliday’s excellent book, The Inheritance of Wealth, helps to fill this lacuna. Of special philosophical interest is Halliday’s attempt to integrate elements of “luck egalitarianism” within a “social egalitarian” framework. This endeavour is both misguided and unnecessary—or so I shall suggest below. I nonetheless recommend this book enthusiastically to anyone interested in questions of distributive justice. Hopefully it will prompt further examination and debate of this important topic.

 

I.

 

The first chapter of Halliday’s book provides an overview of its main themes and theses. A primary concern is “economic segregation.” In an economically segregated society: (a) individuals belong to groups that are distinguished by different levels of wealth (say, the “top 1%” versus the “next 19%” versus the next four quintiles); (b) there is little movement by individuals between groups during their lives; and (c) members of different groups enjoy different levels of opportunities (educational, professional, etc.) and political power. Liberal egalitarian justice requires the elimination, insofar as it is feasible, of entrenched class hierarchy. The arbitrary inequalities among citizens based on the economic groups into which they are born violates liberal justice in much the same way as group-based inequalities based upon race, sex, sexual orientation, and religion.

 

The book also aims to integrate two rival views of egalitarian justice. Halliday’s liberal egalitarian framework is novel in that it is a social egalitarian one that purports to incorporate certain core luck egalitarian ideas. “[N]either approach works especially well if used alone,” he claims, “but […] they work well when combined in the right way” (p.5). (As I explain later, I do not think that this integrative project is successful; however, I also do not think it is necessary for Halliday’s other main positions.)

 

A third key claim of the book is that liberal egalitarianism can best address the problem of inherited wealth via what Halliday refers to as the “Rignano scheme” (this scheme is drawn from the early twentieth-century work of the Italian theorist Eugenio Rignano). According to the Rignano scheme, “inheritance can be taxed at a greater rate when it rolls over—when it gets passed down more than once” (p. 7). What this means, roughly, is that if Albert creates 100 dollars of wealth during his lifetime, he should be able to bequeath most of that to his daughter Beth. However, if Beth retains most of that wealth, say 80 dollars, much of that (perhaps all) should be taxed away if she bequeaths it to her son Cassius (so Cassius would receive little or nothing in second-generation inheritance). The low tax rate imposed on only the initial transfer has two justifications. First, it gives Albert an incentive to work hard (so that he can pass on some wealth to Beth), but it also creates an incentive for Beth to avoid idleness (since she must create new wealth if she wishes to bequeath any to Cassius). Second, the Rignano scheme may encourage the development and dispersal of new wealth throughout the population, thereby fostering the growth of the middle-class (bequeathments of “old money,” in contrast, have no similar positive effects, and hence can be taxed away).

 

Chapter two discusses the views of early liberal writers on inheritance. The positions of John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, William Godwin, and John Stuart Mill are outlined and evaluated. Chapter three focuses on Mill’s utilitarianism and the Rignano scheme, as formulated primarily in Rignano’s The Social Significance of Death Duties. Halliday explains that Rignano was working within Mill’s utilitarian framework, and recommends that we repurpose the Rignano scheme for liberal egalitarianism. Liberal egalitarianism is concerned with securing and maintaining the free and equal standing of all citizens over time. This requires preventing or breaking up economic segregation, and the Rignano scheme can help do this.

 

Halliday develops his egalitarian framework in chapters three, four, and five. Since my main criticism of the book concerns his attempt to integrate elements of luck egalitarianism into a social egalitarian framework, I will save my discussion of these chapters until the next section. 

 

Chapter seven addresses libertarian views. It is not clear to me why this chapter is included in the book. Halliday writes that “there is more to be gained from using libertarian insights to develop the views that I have already defended, rather than being drawn into the broader fight between egalitarians and libertarians” (p. 162). But since libertarianism is incompatible with liberal egalitarianism, including Halliday’s version, I cannot see what utility these “insights” might have. I would have welcomed some explanation of how liberal egalitarianism might perhaps revise and appropriate them.

 

The final chapter is the most “applied” of the book as it considers alternative tax schemes and argues that the Rignano scheme is to be preferred over viable alternatives for addressing the problem of economic segregation. Halliday emphasizes that a just tax scheme must satisfy a (Rawlsian) criterion of publicity, and that alternative schemes must be evaluated against each other rather than against some perfect ideal, with the recognition that any scheme when implemented will be imperfect (pp. 186-88).

 

I found especially interesting Halliday’s comparison of his proposal with Thomas Piketty’s endorsement of a wealth tax (pp.201-204). The two proposals have different targets: Piketty’s wealth tax concerns the staggering wealth of a small class of elite rentiers, whereas the Rignano scheme addresses more general economic segregation. Halliday concludes that the two proposals consequently are compatible. This is an interesting claim, I think, and worthy of further consideration.

 

 

II.

 

As mentioned earlier, in chapters three, four, and five, Halliday tries to formulate a version of liberal egalitarianism that integrates luck egalitarianism and social egalitarianism. I think that this integrative endeavour is unsuccessful.

 

First, some background. Two families of liberal egalitarian conceptions of justice have emerged over the past few decades: luck egalitarianism and social egalitarianism (the latter also is known as “relational egalitarianism”). Both families share a common ancestor: the account of justice presented in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Luck egalitarians have understood their project, at least in part, as developing the implications of Rawls’s comments on the “moral arbitrariness” of the distribution of unchosen social and natural advantages in Theory[3] into a distinct approach to theorizing about justice, one that is egalitarian in nature but also sensitive to individual responsibility. According to luck egalitarians, the aim of justice is to neutralize any disadvantages that people are born into or acquire as the result of brute luck, disadvantages for which they are not responsible and consequently do not deserve. In a fully just luck egalitarian society, people would fare well or poorly solely in conformity to those decisions and actions for which they are rightly responsible.

 

But despite helping to inspire luck egalitarianism, Rawls’s own conception of “justice as fairness” is a form of social egalitarianism. While not all social egalitarians endorse justice as fairness, they generally follow Rawls’s “constructivist” approach to thinking about justice.^[4] According to this approach, broadly speaking, principles of political justice should be understood as rationally constructed in order to satisfy the requirements of reciprocity among free and equal citizens under conditions of relative scarcity. A fully just social egalitarian society, then, is not one that “neutralizes luck,” but rather one in which citizens relate to each other as social equals on the basis of mutual respect, and freely govern their lives on conditions fair to all.

 

Halliday’s view is primarily a social egalitarian one. He explains some of the key problems with luck egalitarianism, especially as applied to questions having to do with inheritance, in chapter four. For instance, because of its single-minded focus on the distinction between “choice” and “circumstance,” what Halliday terms “naïve luck egalitarianism” implausibly condemns “all inheritance no matter its size.” So naïve luck egalitarianism condemns as unjust the inheritance of “my grandfather’s old beer tankard” (pp.77-78). After dispatching naïve luck egalitarianism, the more nuanced views of theorists such as G.A. Cohen, Kok-Chor Tan, and Ronald Dworkin are discussed and criticized. Ultimately, Halliday holds that luck egalitarianism, by itself, is unsatisfactory because of its focus on whether or not individuals “deserve” their conditions and holdings: the view cannot address the problem of group segregation and inequality, including economic segregation.

 

Chapters five and six discuss economic segregation and how inheritance helps to maintain it over time. “Economic segregation,” Halliday writes, “is a type of social segregation that occurs when groups have their boundaries defined by economic difference rather than by (e.g.) racial or religious difference” (p.102). Halliday points out that it is not just inequality of wealth that is a cause of social segregation. The intergenerational transfer of wealth facilitates the hoarding of nonfinancial—social and cultural—capital. Social capital “consists in valuable knowledge and opportunities,” whereas cultural capital “consists in certain behavioural norms or dispositions” (p.107). According to Halliday, “the significance of inheritance owes much to the way in which intergenerational transfers help groups maintain their accumulated nonfinancial capital, even if nonfinancial capital is not transferred down the generations simply as an automatic consequence of the transfer of wealth” (pp.107-108). Those who inherit wealth, or know that they will eventually, can devote considerable resources and time to providing their children with the means for superior life-prospects. Valuable cultural capital can be transferred through the cultivation of “prestigious” hobbies and skills (violin-playing or fluency in a foreign language), as well as education and more general patterns of behaviour (accents, confidence when interacting with authorities, and so forth). Social capital is secured via access to elite schools, internships, job opportunities, and the like. These forms of nonfinancial capital reinforce each other: those who possess cultural capital can exploit effectively their social capital. Moreover, these advantages reinforce themselves over generations: parents who already possess cultural and social capital can transfer it to their children more readily than those who do not. The discussion of these processes in chapters five and six—and the difficulty, if not practical impossibility, of overcoming them without wealth redistribution, including restrictions on inheritances—is insightful and important.

 

Halliday notes that social egalitarianism is committed to two core claims about justice, one “negative” and one “positive.” The negative claim is that “equality requires the elimination of oppressive social hierarchies.” The positive claim is that justice requires that social institutions be reformed or designed “so as to create a genuine society of equals” (p.105). Inheritance flows facilitate economic segregation, and economic segregation is a social hierarchy that thwarts the creation of a society of substantively free and equal citizens. Consequently, the social egalitarian case for regulating inheritance, whether via the Rignano scheme or some other form of taxation, is straightforward. Citizens cannot relate to one another as equals if they live in a de facto aristocracy, that is, a society that (to a great extent) allocates economic opportunities and political power based upon citizens’ unchosen classes.

 

The social egalitarian view looks sufficient to justify the regulation of intergenerational flows of wealth. Yet Halliday contends that luck egalitarianism also has a role to play. “[L]uck cannot be eliminated from an egalitarian diagnosis of what is objectionable about unrestricted inheritance,” he writes, “Inheritance is unjust when it allows some people to enjoy brute luck advantage, but the specific kind of brute luck advantage is understood in terms of group membership” (p.152). So, while social egalitarianism helps explain why economic segregation is unjust and measures should be taken to eliminate or reduce it as much as possible, including regulating inheritances, it needs to be supplemented with the claim that it is unjust that some people enjoy superior or inferior life prospects simply in virtue of having been born into one economic class or another.

 

I think that this attempt to integrate luck egalitarianism and social egalitarianism misconstrues the nature of social egalitarianism’s objection to social segregation. Social egalitarians are aware that it is a matter of “luck” that, for instance, some people need wheelchairs to get around adequately and others do not. But this is not why justice requires the adequate provision of wheelchairs to all citizens who need them, and that public and commercial spaces must accommodate them. Such accommodation simply is necessary for equal citizenship—“correcting” for brute bad luck has nothing to do with it.

 

When someone is born into a family in which there is considerable inherited wealth—in which one’s parents themselves inherited or will inherit wealth, and thus can secure competitive advantages with respect to social and cultural capital for the person in question—this is indeed a matter of “luck,” insofar as that person did nothing to “deserve” that place within the social hierarchy. Likewise, someone born white and male in a racist and patriarchal society did nothing to “deserve” that privileged position. But it is not the luck in such cases that is the problem; rather it is the hierarchy. Social egalitarians aim at the elimination of economically segregated hierarchies altogether, whatever their source, because hierarchies prevent egalitarian social relations—just as they aim at the elimination of race- or sex-based hierarchies. Consequently, I do not think that social egalitarianism “needs” to embed any luck egalitarian component into its framework—“anti-luckism” simply is not a concern of social egalitarianism. (Being born poor, non-white, and/or female are not “misfortunes” for which one should be “compensated.”)

 

The Rawlsian version of social egalitarianism, for instance, holds that social equality involves ensuring that the principles of justice that are to regulate the most important social institutions of society, its “basic structure,” enable citizens to live and interact as both equal subjects and co-sovereigns. Hence those principles must satisfy what Rawls calls the “criterion of reciprocity.” According to Halliday, “reciprocity is not the only concept that Rawls used to derive the requirements of justice and […] he did not actually invoke the concept of reciprocity when alluding to why justice might require restrictions on inherited wealth” (p.90). This is a misinterpretation, though, as it fails to recognize the foundational role of reciprocity in Rawls’s theory. The criterion of reciprocity is the “intrinsic (moral) political ideal” of justice as fairness[5]—indeed, it justifies the use of the “original position” device to formulate the principles of justice as fairness.[6] Consequently, reciprocity does justify Rawls’s overall conception of justice and the restrictions on inherited wealth that he thinks are required by that conception. Justice as fairness is the most reasonable conception of justice because it best satisfies the requirements of reciprocity.[7]

 

Once we see that social egalitarianism (at least of the Rawlsian variety) is committed to reciprocity, and economic segregation violates the requirements of reciprocity (as expressed in the principles of justice), then the case for regulating the intergenerational transfer of wealth is straightforward—as Rawls’s own brief recommendations indicate. There is no need to appeal to any form of luck egalitarianism. Moreover, the social egalitarian case is not only sufficient, but its “second personal” constructivist character, focused on reciprocity, cannot felicitously be merged with the assumptions of luck egalitarianism.[8]

 

III.

 

My comments have focused primarily on the aspect of Halliday’s view with which I disagree. Nonetheless, I think that the analyses and arguments presented in this book are interesting and important. I learned a lot from reading it. Halliday certainly is correct that justice requires the regulation of inheritances, and the Rignano scheme is an intriguing proposal for how to do so. Hence, I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in contemporary issues concerning distributive justice.

---

[1] See: J. Rawls (1999), A Theory of Justice, revised edition (Harvard University Press), pp.245-246; (2001) Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Harvard University Press), pp.160-161.

[2] See, e.g., T. Piketty (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press).

[3] See Rawls (1999), pp.63-65, 87-89, 274.

^[4] Some social egalitarians, like Elizabeth Anderson, refer to “contractualism” rather than “constructivism” (see E. Anderson (2010) “The Fundamental Disagreement between Luck Egalitarians and Relational Egalitarians,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Supplementary Volume 36): 1-23). Everything that I say about constructivism can be restated in contractualist terms.

[5] Rawls (2005) Political Liberalism (Columbia Univesity Press), p.xlv.

[6] See Rawls (2005), pp.xlviii-xlix, 450.

[7] See Rawls (2005), pp. xlvi-xlvii.

[8] See Anderson (2010).

Elizabeth Anderson: champion of relational egalitarianism

Looking for a stimulating article with which to start the new year? Try this New Yorker piece on the work and life of Elizabeth Anderson (the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan) by Nathan Heller.

I’ve mentioned Anderson’s important work here before. Her influence on my own research—especially her account of ‘relational equality’—has been enormous. Strangely, though, while Anderson was the Co-Chair of my dissertation committee at the University of Michigan, I have been far more influenced by her work post-PhD than I was while a graduate student. (The reason for this, I think, is that I only felt free to engage critically with her views once I had left the 'student-supervisor' relationship. This was my fault, I should emphasize, as she no doubt would’ve welcomed critical engagement with her work by graduate students.)

I do disagree with Anderson on some points. For instance, I remain critical of what I take to be her uncharitable characterization—and hence unfair criticism—of ‘ideal theory’ (as I explain in my chapter “Why Public Reasoning Involves Ideal Theorizing”.) But whatever disagreements I have with her are, so to speak, ‘minor quibbles’.

I’ve taught her criticisms of ‘luck egalitarianism’ and her arguments in favour of relational egalitarianism in many of my political philosophy courses over the years. And in my ‘political autonomy’ seminar last year I taught her book Private Government (which is mentioned towards the end of the article). Of all the works we discussed—including those by Rousseau and Rawls—this one generated the most intense discussions. No doubt part of the reason for this was that many of the students worked part-time—and hence were regularly subject to the arbitrary power of employers themselves.

The Kochtopus is poised to control the Trump administration

I’ve mentioned the threat that the Koch brothers and the various organizations that they fund and control – a sprawling plutocratic network of political influence and corruption often referred to as the ‘Kochtopus’ – pose to American democracy before in this blog. Given that the Kochs refused to back Trump during the 2016 election, they have not been subject to as much scrutiny in the most recent election cycle as they have been in the past. However, the Kochs are now poised to shape the policy agenda of the coming Trump administration in numerous horrible ways.

Theda Skocpol, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Caroline Tervo explain what is happening in their important article, “Behind ‘Make America Great,’ the Koch Agenda Returns with a Vengence,” at TPM.

Some key points:

During the election campaign, Trump relied upon well-established conservative organizational networks that could reach into many states and communities. … [H]e benefitted indirectly from Koch network operations centered in a nation-spanning, political party-like federation called Americans for Prosperity. Even more important, after his campaign squeaked through on November 8, an unprepared President-Elect Trump started to fall back on people and plans offered by the Koch network, which aims to dismantle not only Barack Obama’s accomplishments but much of what the federal government has done for 75 years to promote security and opportunity for ordinary Americans.
…
Despite loud pronouncements from Charles Koch that his network would not support Trump, the Kochs’ massive political operation worked over many months to turn out Republican voters in key states. Above all, AFP was deeply involved in get-out-the-vote efforts, especially in the critical swing states of Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
…
Having helped to elect Trump and a fully GOP-controlled Congress, the Koch network is now positioned to staff and steer much that happens in Washington DC.
…
For the emerging Trump White House, Vice President Mike Pence, long a Koch network favorite, was put in charge of transition planning for federal personnel appointments – and one of his senior staffers for this effort is his long-time associate, Marc Short, recent head of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the lynchpin of the Koch network’s fundraising operation.
…
In addition to Pence and Short, newly-named White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has had strong ties to AFP’s chapter in Wisconsin – a chapter that has been central to all aspects of politics and policy in that state during the ascendancy of Governor Scott Walker.
…
After apparently denouncing and opposing GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan during the election campaign, President-Elect Trump did a quick about-face to fully embrace Ryan and his radical government-shrinking policy agenda. Speaker Ryan has been a featured politician at many Koch donor conclaves over the years, and Washington Post reporter Matea Gold has described Ryan as “clearly a favorite of the Koch donor network.” It is not hard to see why. Ryan’s main priorities, already spelled out in budgets that House Republicans have repeatedly passed, include slashing federal funding for Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other parts of the social safety net for the poor; privatizing Medicare for future generations of American retirees; instituting large and regressive tax cuts rewarding corporations and the very wealthy; gutting what remains of labor regulations and union rights; and eliminating business and environmental regulations.
…
With all of these leadership ties in place, is it no surprise that specific plans have rapidly emerged to advance the Koch agenda in the new Congress that convenes in January 2017, perhaps enacting bills so quickly that opponents will be disorganized and most Americans will not understand what is happening.
…
With total GOP control of Washington DC about to happen, the Koch network dream of an enfeebled U.S. domestic government is on the verge of realization.

Read the whole thing – and despair.

Interview on freedom, money, and justice as fairness

Last September I was interviewed about my forthcoming article, "Freedom, Money, and Justice as Fairness," by Sarah Vickery for the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee journal In Focus. The interview can be found on page four of the journal (available here). I've reproduced it below.

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR ALL (SOME RESTRICTIONS MAY APPLY)

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science (UWM)

“With freedom and justice for all” is the last line of the Pledge of Allegiance and a guiding ideal in American society, but there’s a caveat: freedom seem to be worth more the wealthier you are.

“You and I have an equal right to freedom of association,” explained Philosophy professor Blain Neufeld. “That right is protected equally for both of us. But if I’m wealthy, I can exercise that right more effectively. I can set up associations or travel to distant places to associate with others. We have equal liberty but I can make better use of it.”

That’s one of the principles forming the basis of Neufeld’s recent paper, “Freedom, Money, and Justice as Fairness” published in the journal Politics, Philosophy, & Economics. He seeks to answer a question that has sobering implications for our society: How do you reconcile the thought that we have basic freedoms with varying abilities to exercise them against the idea that money can grant access to freedoms that others without money will never have?

There are two seemingly conflicting views of freedom at work here, said Neufeld. The first is philosopher John Rawls’ conception of Justice as Fairness which claims that: (1) every individual has an equal right to a set of basic liberties, but (2) there may exist some inequalities in society, such as those regarding income and wealth, which can in influence the worth of those liberties. The first principle has lexical priority in Rawls’ conception of justice, meaning it will always take precedence over the second.

On the other hand is philosopher Gerald Cohen, who argues that wealth can eliminate barriers to freedom, giving wealthy people certain liberties that others do not have.

“If Cohen’s right, why would (Rawls) insist on lexical priority? It doesn’t make sense,” Neufeld said. “The paper is an attempt to explain why you still want the lexical priority even if you’ve granted Cohen’s point – why you’d still want to have special protection for these basic rights, even if you acknowledged that the more wealth people have, the more freedom they have.”

Neufeld was inspired to write the paper thanks to a Canadian lottery commercial he remembered seeing regularly as a child. The ad showed happy lottery winners traveling and enjoying fun activities under the tagline ‘Imagine the freedom.’

“When I read Cohen’s article, that commercial popped into my mind. If you win the lottery, you’re free! You can remove all of these constraints,” Neufeld said. “I thought, if Cohen is right, does this spell trouble for Rawls’ conception of justice? I hope it doesn’t, or I’ll have to reevaluate what I’m doing with my life.”

Neufeld won’t have to reevaluate too hard; he concluded that Rawls can accommodate Cohen’s point if you apply to Justice as Fairness a “basic needs” principle – an insurance that everyone has adequate education, discretionary time, health care, and other fundamental needs met.

“If you secure those things, you already establish a level of freedom all citizens have to a more or less equal degree, even independent of whatever inequality might be necessary for economic efficiency,” Neufeld said.

That has implications for our own political system, he added, especially when we look at how current rhetoric and social systems have marginalized some groups of Americans, thanks to income inequality. This paper won’t change it, but, “It’s one of my on-going concerns, trying to resurrect another way of thinking about individual freedom that points out that inequality is incompatible with widespread liberty,” Neufeld added.

More concretely, Neufeld emphasized in his argument about the basic needs principle that one fundamental need is adequate discretionary time. People need time away from work to pursue leisure activities, to engage socially, and to think about important things – like what their political views should be. He’s been dismayed to see Americans working longer hours in recent decades, alongside attacks to benefits like overtime pay.

“What Rawls talks about in terms of a basic needs principle as a precondition of even being able to be free – if you’re not educated, if you don’t know what options are available to you; you’re not free to choose among those options. If you’re working constantly, you can’t, say, think about how to vote in an upcoming election,” Neufeld said. “This idea of a basic needs principle is important.”

Piketty and Rawls on capitalism and inequality

I read Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century last year.  In fact, I was involved in two reading groups on the book, an online group organized by my friend Christopher Robichaud at the Kennedy School of Government (summer 2014), and one ‘in person’ group at the University of Toronto Law School (autumn 2014).  It was the longest book that I’d read, I think, since Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but well worth it.

In the book Piketty documents the long-term tendency of capitalist societies toward what he terms ‘patrimonial capitalism.’  A patrimonial capitalist society, roughly, is one in which the members of that society’s economic elite enjoy their privileged position primarily as a consequence of inheritance, not innovation or entrepreneurship.  Simplifying greatly, the reason for this tendency is that returns to capital (‘r’) generally grow at a higher rate than the overall economy (‘g’).  Consequently, the already wealthy within society tend to become wealthier at a much faster rate than anyone else, and, moreover, pass this advantage on to their descendants.  This economic elite becomes largely a class of rentiers.  The members of this class also are able to employ their wealth to influence the political decision-making processes of their society, thereby undermining the democratic equality of citizens. 

One thing that really struck my about Piketty’s book is how much it supports Rawls’s earlier, more speculative worries about the long-term tendency of capitalist societies toward growing inequality, decreasing political freedom for most citizens, and hence injustice.  Rawls’s preferred regime types – which are ‘realistic utopias’ that are to be created out of our existing societies (they are regime types that have never been realized) – are ‘property-owning democracy’ and ‘liberal socialism.’  Both of these kinds of societies counteract capitalism’s tendency toward ever-increasing inequality and plutocracy, despite being (to a great extent) market societies.  One way that these societies do this is by limiting the total amount of wealth that citizens can inherit.  This counter-acts the intergenerational concentration of wealth within a small portion of the population, and sustains the democratic equality of all citizens over time.

Anyhow, what motivated me to post something on Piketty now is that the blog Crooked Timber is wrapping up an online ‘seminar’ on Capital in the 21st Century.  I’ve only read Elizabeth Anderson’s piece so far, but the contributors are all impressive thinkers, so I look forward to checking out the other posts in the near future, as well as Piketty’s forthcoming response.

Plutocrats pull the plug on perennial political puppet Walker

As I have noted earlier here, the current political system within the United States, to a great extent at least, is a de facto plutocracy.  And one would be hard-pressed to find a better illustration of this than Scott Walker.  Almost all of his important political decisions since becoming governor of Wisconsin in January 2011 have furthered the interests the plutocratic class, and harmed the interests of everyone else, especially the poor, women, and workers.  Much of Walker’s harsh right-wing legislation is pulled directly from ALEC. 

(If you would like to witness some vivid examples of Walker’s craven appeasement of the wealthy, there is this video of his interaction with Wisconsin billionaire Diana Hendricks, as well as the prank phone call in which Walker mistakenly believed that he is speaking with David Koch.)

And now Scott Walker has dropped out of the race to become the Republican nominee for president. 

While I always thought that is was unlikely that he would become the GOP nominee, let alone win the presidency, it never struck me as impossible.  Even a 1-in-50 chance of Walker becoming most powerful person on earth terrified me.  In recent weeks, fortunately, his odds of winning the nomination declined precipitously, driving him to increasingly desperate measures, such as promising to ‘wreak havoc’ on Washington, and doubling-down on his ongoing anti-union crusade.  But, thankfully and unsurprisingly, these manic and malevolent gestures were to no avail.

Amusingly, in his exit speech, Walker said: “Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race.”  Simply put, he is ‘leading’ by quitting.  Well okay then!  I very much hope that he exercises such leadership again soon as governor of Wisconsin.

As the plutocratic candidate par excellence, it seems clear that Walker decided to abandon his quest for the presidency once his wealthy funders told him that the gig was up.  Following two lacklustre debate performances, some bizarre policy statements (e.g., considering a border wall with Canada to be a ‘legitimate issue’), and numerous flip-flops (e.g., his various positions concerning birthright citizenship), Walker’s stock was in free-fall.  Throwing more money at the Walker team would not help at this point.  Money may be far too powerful in contemporary politics, but it couldn’t help Walker’s intrinsic shortcomings as a national candidate, such as his aggressive lack of charisma and his dim-witted demeanour.  So, as Josh Marshall points out at TPM, Walker “lived by the Koch,” and now has “died by the Koch.” 

Gee.  It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving puppet.  

Happy Labour/Labor Day

I’m back in Wisconsin now, where in recent years the Koch-puppet governor of this declining state, the college dropout and life-long politician Scott Walker, has implemented ALEC-written legislation to eviscerate the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsinites.  (Walker seems to enjoy championing Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson in his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, including riding a Harley motorcycle around Iowa and New Hampshire.  Unsurprisingly, he seems oblivious to the fact that Harley-Davidson is a government-supported union shop, and ‘union made’ is proudly stamped on their products.)

Of course, Walker merely is one loyal pawn within the larger force assaulting working people within the United States.  In this piece from two years ago, Zaid Jilani notes five kinds of hard-fought benefits – namely, pensions, the right to organize, income equality, access to healthcare, and fair working hours – that presently are under attack from plutocrat-funded right-wing operatives like Walker.

Perhaps surprisingly, Labour Day has a Canadian origin.  In the United States, its emergence as a holiday was rather violent.  Very roughly, recognition of Labour – er, ‘Labor’ – Day as a federal holiday was pushed for by President Grover Cleveland in the immediate aftermath of the violent suppression of the Pullman strike in 1894.  Cleveland hoped that this move would mitigate any political backlash against him and his actions.  (A brief explanation of the origins of the holiday within the U.S. by Prof. Ben Railton can be found at Talking Points Memo.)

In a just society – something like what John Rawls (drawing upon the work of the British economist James Meade) calls a ‘property-owning democracy’ – wealth and political power would be widely and roughly equally dispersed amongst citizens.  There would be little or no need for unions in such a society (though as voluntary organizations they certainly would be legal). 

However, we do not live in anything like a just liberal egalitarian society.  There is no property-owning democracy anywhere within the world today (though, of course, some existing capitalist welfare-states fare far better in terms of justice, equality, and freedom than others; for instance, the Scandinavian countries are considerably less unjust than the United States).

Given the overwhelming political power of the extremely wealthy within capitalist societies, unions have played a necessary role in promoting the interests, rights, and wellbeing of workers of all kinds since their emergence in the 19^th Century.  The existence of weekends and 8-hour workdays were not granted to citizens out of the kindness of capitalists’ hearts!  It is no coincidence that that the re-emergence of the political power of the plutocratic class, and the parallel stagnation of most citizens’ income and wealth, within the United States has coincided with the decline of union membership in recent decades.

Societies in which union membership is common and widespread enjoy higher levels of wellbeing than societies in which union membership is minimal.  It is hard to see how the United Stated might become a more equal and just society without a reinvigorated labour movement.  And the prospects for such a movement, sadly, seem quite bleak today.  But perhaps ‘millennials’ might be a source of optimism on this front?  (The hope strikes me as a rather faint one, alas.)