How Much Redistribution Should There Be?

Abstract

Egalitarianism ties people’s fortunes together. It takes the good and bad things in people’s lives—their blessings and their afflictions—and shares them out, or redistributes them, among their fellows. Where egalitarianism operates, each person’s fortunes and misfortunes cease to be just her own and become, to the extent egalitarianism recommends, a part of communal fortunes and misfortunes, shared in by all those who come under egalitarianism’s purview. Egalitarian political theories are not the only ones to tie people’s fortunes together; feudal theories, for example, do so as well. But egalitarianism differs from these and other political theories in the manner of its tying. Egalitarianism insists that all people’s lives are equally important and, accordingly, that no person’s fortune may be subordinated to anyone else’s. Egalitarian intuitions call for redistribution that takes from the betteroff—the rich, the healthy, and the fulfilled—and gives to the worse-off— the poor, the sick, and the desolate. But these intuitions stand in need of elaboration, and an egalitarian theory answers this need by presenting an articulate account of nonsubordination among persons.