Matt Zeitlin

One of the more fascinating and original bits of social and economic criticism is Unjust Deserts by Lew Daly and Gal Aperovitz. The simple version of their argument is that nearly all economic growth and productivity gains can be attributed to social and public conditions that have little or nothing to do with the actions of any individuals. Our institutions and public investments create the conditions for growth and productivity and are actually the root cause of most anyone’s great individual wealth. So, if we assume that the pattern of income distribution should have something to do with desert, then our current socio-economic system, with very low taxes (for the developed world) on the rich, a tax preference for the types of income that rich people are likely to have and underinvestments in public goods, makes no sense from a moral standpoint. 

There are two ways to take this argument: one political and the other philosophical. Let’s deal with the philosophy first. Will Wilkinson, in both a fantastic diavlog with Daly and in a subsequent blog post, points out that assuming income distribution should reflect some notion of deserts is hardly non-controversial. Now, he comes to this conclusion from a libertarian perspective. In Will’s world, if people make an agreement to exchange some goods for services, as long as this interaction is fair, free and non-coerced, then we can’t object to the distribution that amounts from millions of these interactions. I think, in some basic sense, I’m closer to Will here. I lean heavily towards anti-foundationalism, meaning that I don’t put a ton of credence in claims of who “deserves” what. Instead, I think we can look pragmatically at which economic and political systems are the best. For example, Northern European countries have lower inequality, better public services and more social mobility. These outcomes seem to be better, on net, for just about everyone, so I think we should generally move in that direction. Closer to home, Democratic presidencies lead to more growth for everyone, while Republican presidencies tend to lead to slow growth for everyone except the richest. Ergo, we should probably vote for Democrats.

But clearly economic and social policy isn’t decided based on competing claims of desert or more basic claims over whether or not desert exists. Instead, there’s an ideology promoted by Republicans that A. Rich people deserve 120 percent of their income and that B. It’s better that rich people keep all they earn than to fund public goods. This strain of thought goes pretty deep into how Republicans think about politics — just see, how, when everything else failed, McCain attacked Obama as a redistributionist. And although he made some arguments about how government doesn’t do anything good with its money, his main argument was that redistbrution was ipso facto wrong. It’s into this situation where Daly and Aperowitz’s work is so important. If more and more people realize that these claims of desert are pretty dumb and that, in fact, public investments and institutions are responsible for the growth and productivity we all enjoy, then maybe Republican rhetoric on taxes will become less and less salient. 

*I should note that Outliers is much more likely to actually change how a signifigant number of people think about these issues, but I like talking about Daly and Aperowitz because they make a much more sophisticated and sound argument. 

**For more on Unjust Deserts, check out this interview in Dissent with the authors.