Abstract:
G.A. Cohen famously claims that egalitarians shouldn’t be so rich. If you possess excess income and there is little chance that the state will redistribute it to the poor, you are obligated to donate it yourself. We argue that this conclusion is correct, but that the case against the rich egalitarian is significantly stronger than the one Cohen offers. In particular, the standard arguments against donating one’s excess income face two critical, unrecognized problems. First, we show that these arguments imply that citizens have no duty to further egalitarian political institutions—a conclusion that Cohen’s Rawlsian opponents cannot abide. Second, these arguments yield unacceptable implications for other questions of justice. We conclude that even moderately rich egalitarians are obligated to donate their excess income.
In philosophy and elsewhere, it's funny how frequently you encounter professed egalitarians who live high while people die, who seek and flaunt high status, and yet who somehow think themselves kindly and sympathetic because they defend egalitarian redistribution in obscure journals. One New York-area egalitarian of high stature was reputed to make grad students pay for his fancy dinners for the privilege of eating with him.
This paper considers and refutes a number of reasons egalitarians have offered on behalf of the claim that they are not obligated to donate their excess income (to government, to an NGO, or directly to those worse off):
1. Structuralism: Justice applies only to the basic structure and not to personal behavior
2. There is a division of labor; individuals are not charged with promoting justice directly.
3. Donations are a "drop in the ocean"; they do not change the overall distribution much.
4. Donations don't change the causes of inequality.
5. We have an obligation to support just institutions, not to promote equality directly.
6. Paying taxes is less burdensome than giving to charity.
7. We don't have the assurance others will do their part, and it's unfair/etc. if I give when I can't be sure others will.
8. Proper egalitarianism allows for some inequality. For instance, no one should make less than a post-doc and more than a chaired law professor at Yale. Therefore, since all of us richer professors are within the upper limit, we are not required to give, though perhaps even richer egalitarians (such as Bernie Sanders or most leftie movie stars) are.
We have a number of responses to each kind of argument. Sometimes we show the arguments are simply badly formed or question-begging. We frequently show that each of these arguments leads to other absurd or deeply unpalatable conclusions that the egalitarians who make such arguments would not want to endorse. None of this arguments work. They are all just rationalizations. If you are an egalitarian, you ought to donate most of your income to those significantly worse off than you, or to effective charities, or even to a government. Otherwise, you are a morally blameworthy hypocrite.
Here's an excerpt:
As more general point, the “drop in the ocean” argument looks extremely implausible when applied to virtually any issue of justice other than distributive justice. Suppose that Bess is running her business within a basic framework that permits discriminatory hiring practices. She reckons that it is morally permissible for her to discriminate against applicants based on their race because any decision of hers to not discriminate wouldn’t make a dent in the larger social problem of racial discrimination. Clearly, Bess is in the wrong. Even if her decision to act unjustly toward particular people is a “drop in the ocean,” she still ought not act unjustly
Indeed, Rawls himself seems to agree with us here. For instance, he says universities cannot engage in racial discrimination, churches cannot burn heretics, parents cannot deprive their children of medical care, and parents should ensure that the burdens of raising children do not fall disproportionately on women. In these and other cases, Rawls says that principles of justice directly control individual behavior in markets and civil society, not merely what the laws should say about individual behavior. Presumably, if a society had no laws forbidding such behaviors—if it allowed churches to burn heretics—Rawls would not merely say the basic structure is unjust. He would likely say that it would still be unjust for individual priests to burn heretics. Further, Rawls is not saying these cases are wrong because they violate other principles of justice beyond those constituting justice as fairness; he says these behaviors violate justice as fairness.
To bring the argument back to distributive justice in particular, consider a thought experiment. Imagine a party brings together a large number of people. It could be great-grandma hosting her 100 great-grandchildren, none of whom have met each other before. Or imagine a new business has an opening day party.
Suppose a giant pie will be sliced and distributed to the partygoers. Imagine the person cutting and handing out slices does what he admits is a bad job—some slices are huge and others tiny. 100 uneven slices are handed out. 98 of the 100 attendees immediately eat their slices, leaving just you with your giant slice and Mary with a tiny slice. She says, “Wow, the slices are so uneven. Might you share some of yours with me?”
It seems absurd for you to say, “Well, since everyone else has already eaten their slices, there’s no way for me to rectify the overall unjust distribution. Even if I share my pie and we both get equal slices, the overall distribution will remain unjust. So, I might as well eat my big slice while you nibble on your tiny slice.”
It’s true that sharing with Mary won't fix the overall distribution. But that doesn’t appear to justify your refusal to share with Mary. Even if we modify the thought experiment, imagining that there are 1,000, 10,000, or a million other pie eaters, and once again, everyone quickly eats their pie except you and Mary, it still seems reasonable for Mary to demand you share with her and unreasonable for you to refuse on the grounds that it won’t fix the problem.
Note that in this thought experiment, we are not even supposing that Mary is very hungry or needy, or that she will starve unless she gets enough pie. What’s doing the work here is the thought that the distribution of pie is unfair, not principles of beneficence or charity.