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July 19, 2007
Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report VI
Interesting thought:
Inequality may also be seen as a problem if the process by which some people become rich is unjust – for example, through luck of birth rather than effort and ability (e.g. see Blanden et al., 2005).
Anyone care to explain how ability (most especially when decoupled from effort) is any more or less unjust than any other inherited characteristic? Remember the Handicapper General?
I agree that inherited money is an easier thing to remove than ability, but how is it any more "unjust"?
July 19, 2007 in Economics | Permalink
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Comments
In Joseph Rowntree’s Memorandum to his advisers on setting up a charitable trust (the "parent" trust of the aforementioned Joseph Rowntree Foundation) in his name, written in 1904, he said: “Every Social writer knows the supreme importance of questions connected with the holding and taxation of land, but for one person who attempts to master this question there are probably thousands who devote their time and strength to relieving poverty and its accompanying evils. … Such aspects of [the Land question] as the nationalisation of land, or the taxation of land values, or the appropriation of the unearned increment – all needs a treatment far more thorough than they have yet received.”
Sounds to me as if JRF are getting too involved in the nitty gritty and not enough involved in their founder's real concerns.
Posted by: Jock | Jul 19, 2007 3:12:18 PM
Jock - well spotted, old JR had twigged that LVT was the key to a lot of things, not taxes on income. And those tits at JRF have spent a hundred years heading off in the wrong direction, looking at symptoms not causes. Ah well.
Posted by: Mark Wadsworth | Jul 19, 2007 4:07:29 PM
if the concept of justice varies between nature-made and man made inequity?
Posted by: Luis Enrique | Jul 19, 2007 4:14:54 PM
