Scanlon on inequality

[Warning: this could become part of a series.]

T. M. Scanlon has some interesting thoughts about why inequality might be bad. In looking for reasons, though, I wonder whether he doesn't overlook an important idea: that significant inequality is intrinsically evil. "The great inequality of income and wealth in the world, and within the United States, is deeply troubling," he says. But he seems somewhat suspicious of this intuition, as if there is no way it could be a direct perception of injustice. That is, his response to the feeling that there is something wrong with great inequality appears to be that either we must be able to explain what is wrong with such inequality or else reject the feeling as irrational. But nobody would say this about, for instance, the feeling that murder is wrong. And it is very hard to explain why murder is wrong. ("It violates the right to life" is a restatement of its injustice, not an explanation of what makes it unjust.) 

I'm not suggesting that all inequality is evil. I accept Hume's point that ensuring strict equality would require totalitarianism. And overall utility is probably increased by an incentive system that requires inequality. But beyond a certain level (which is inevitably hard to specify) inequality certainly seems evil to a great many people. Why rule out the possibility that this appearance is not deceptive?

Scanlon does not explicitly do this, but it seems implicit in his essay. I say this partly simply because he does not explicitly consider the possibility that serious inequality might be intrinsically evil, but partly also because just when I expect him to consider it he goes off in another direction, as if refusing to confront what is right before him. Here are three examples:

Many people in the United States seem to believe that our high and rising level of inequality is objectionable in itself, and it is worth inquiring into why this might be so. 

The inquiry that follows focuses on such things as the ability of the rich to dominate news media rather than anything about inequality in itself.

[Some] reasons for eliminating inequality are also based on an idea of equality, namely that, as Singer puts it, “every life is equally important.” This can be seen as a combination of two ideas: the general principle of universal moral equality, that everyone matters morally in the same way, and the idea that, because all people “matter morally,”  there’s a good reason to bring about increases in their well-being if we can. 

If everyone matters morally in the same way why is this not a reason for eliminating inequality rather than simply increasing the well-being of the poor? Yet Scanlon sees it as the latter only, and this is part of the motivation he offers for a new inquiry into why inequality matters. What I'm thinking is roughly this: since we are all morally equal, we should all be equal in our standard of living. This argument, such as it is, could be criticized on various grounds, but it would not be plausible to object that, while it is a decent argument for improving the well-being of the worst off, it is not, as such, an argument for increasing equality. So far as it is an argument at all that's exactly what it's an argument for.

Finally, this:

It is easy to understand why people want to be better off than they are, especially if their current condition is very bad. But why, apart from this, should anyone be concerned with the difference between what they have and what others have? Why isn’t such a concern mere envy?

But why think that it is envy in the first place? Especially when we are thinking of comfortably-off people like me saying that the less-well-off should have more? A poor person who wants to trade places with a rich person might seem envious, but appeals for greater equality don't have this appearance. Unless, perhaps, one rules out a priori the possibility that equality itself might have value.

I wonder whether Scanlon and I have different ways of thinking about what it means for something to be objectionable in itself. When you accuse someone else of blindness it's always a good idea to consider the possibility that the mote and/or beam is in one's own eye. But it looks like he's missing something.

Minimum wage

Perhaps this isn't worth a blog post, but it's not as if I've been posting much otherwise. Sometimes it's better to have low standards. So here goes.

Two things strike me as not just true but obviously true about any increase in the legal minimum wage (including an increase from nothing to something):

1. it will increase the wages paid to those earning the lowest legal wage
2. it will be a disincentive to employing such people

What's interesting is how rare it is to see both points acknowledged. Proponents of an increase tend to focus exclusively on point #1, either not mentioning point #2 at all or else dismissing it very lightly (for instance, Colin Gordon's generally excellent Growing Apart says little more than that, "a raft of recent research has put to rest the old saw that a higher minimum wage kills jobs or repels investment," which is not true). Opponents of the minimum wage, or at least of increases to it, tend simply to trot out the old saw that Gordon mentions (which is clearly not yet at rest, partly because it has at least this kind of currency and, more importantly, because of this recent evidence). And I'm not talking only about ordinary people. I mean professional experts, including economists.   

So what's my point? Partly I'm just expressing frustration, so my point is: Aaagh!! Partly also I can see why some people are tempted to reject what experts have to say about policy matters. And partly I continue to be interested in economics, what it can and cannot do, and what (if anything) it has to teach us. 

In addition to the two obvious truths listed above I might add these:

     3. what really matters is whether the good of point #1 outweighs the bad of point #2
     4. the way to find out is to see what happens when the minimum wage is increased  

Point #3 involves ethics, but the usual economists' preference for utilitarianism is probably more or less fine here. (Not everyone sees it that way, which is one reason why some people ignore point #2. If #1 is a question of fundamental justice then consequentialist considerations such as #2 might be irrelevant. I don't see it that way, but some do.) Still, this does mean that the relevant question is not about unemployment (or wages) so much as it is about utility. And no one that I know of measures this.

That means that we basically never get to point #4. That is, people do look at what happens, but a) this is really difficult because human interactions are very complicated, and b) the 'what happens' that even the best people look at is not the relevant what happens, i.e. what happens to utility.

Hence the following are the kinds of things the best economists (as far as I know) say on the subject. First, the authors of the recent Seattle-based study that made the headlines:

The second Seattle minimum wage increase, to as much as $13/hour on January 1, 2016, resulted in [...] a reduction of over $100 million per year in total payroll for low-wage jobs, measured as total sum of increased wages received less wages lost due to employment reductions. 

In other words, roughly speaking, people got paid more per hour but were employed for fewer hours, with a resultant net loss of earnings overall. But with the following qualifications:

These analyses are designed to reveal the impact on the entire Seattle low-wage labor market and do not necessarily reveal the full effect of the minimum wage increases on individual workers. Most importantly, our data do not capture employment or earnings in contract or “gig” jobs, work paid “off the books,” self-employment, or work done outside the City of Seattle.

We may not find the same things we found in this study in other cities, states, or at the national level. There are multiple factors that make Seattle and this minimum wage law unique, including high housing costs and relatively large increases in the minimum wage beginning at what had been the nation’s highest state minimum wage. 

So this study is far from being the "proof that increasing the minimum wage doesn't work" that is is presented by some people as being.

Secondly, and finally, here are Isabel Sawhill and Quentin Karpilow speaking sensibly about what economists knew about increasing the minimum wage in 2014:

While a higher minimum wage will help to boost earnings, critics worry about its effects on hiring, arguing that employers will create fewer jobs if they have to pay higher wages. Although past increases do not appear to have adversely affected employment, there is no denying the risk that much larger increases might pose to the least skilled workers. Raising the minimum from its current $7.25 to $15.00 per hour, as some have advocated, would more than double the cost to an employer and likely have some impact on hiring.

The Seattle study does not contradict this. While it does show an adverse effect on employment, the increase that showed this was not the increase to $11 per hour made in April 2015 but the increase to $13 an hour made in January 2016. The Seattle study, in other words, confirms Sawhill's and Karpilow's view (which I think is pretty orthodox) that a modest increase to the minimum wage is likely to be helpful (or at least harmless), but that anything too dramatic could be harmful. They advocate increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, and redesigning the Earned Income Tax Credit.

This kind of work strikes me as being very useful. Its informed skepticism and moderate recommendations are hardly likely to get many people fired up (although I doubt I'm alone in finding thoughtfulness refreshing), but that shouldn't be the measure of value. 

Consolingly disastrous

The election result has left me a bit stunned. It can seem completely mysterious how someone like Trump could be elected, given that the economy is doing well under Obama (whose policies are similar to those you would expect from Clinton) and given Trump's horribleness as an individual. It is not surprising, though, that many Republicans would vote for the Republic candidate even if they don't like him personally. It is not surprising that the improvements in the economy have not helped everyone or have not yet been felt by some of those they are helping. And, of course, there is more to life than the economy.

I think Trump got so many votes because of Republican loyalty, anti-elite and anti-establishment resentment, a desire by people doing well not to lose their relative advantage (even if the economy as a whole does worse), racism, and sexism. The high turnout suggests that Trump's personal qualities actually increased his support, which is disheartening. [Update: It looks as though I might be wrong about this. According to @MaxBoot: "Obama got 65.9m votes in '12, Romney 60.9m. Clinton has 59.3m, Trump 59.1m. R vote didn't go up; Dem vote went down. 6.6m missing votes."] But if you want an anti-establishment figure then one with a vicious character might be appealing. And he clearly has the qualities to appeal to racists and sexists. If what you care about most is your own relative wealth, etc. then you might well hold your nose and vote for a Trump. (Relative wealth because a Trump presidency is not actually likely to be good for the economy overall.) So maybe it's not so mysterious after all.

One remaining mystery is why there was so much antipathy towards Hillary Clinton. Sexism must be part of the answer, and her being part of the establishment another. But enough mud seems to have been thrown at her that some of it has stuck, leaving many people convinced that she must be corrupt despite the absence of proof. This raises questions about the media as well as about the electorate. If you don't like Clinton because she's supposedly corrupt, why would you prefer Trump? Of course I don't know. I wonder whether guilt about voting for Trump produces bad feelings that are then projected onto Clinton.

The media partly want to get attention, and Trump is good for that. They also might really believe that there are two sides to every story and no such thing as objective truth for them to report. The result is that both candidates are presented as being about equally bad, so you can hate the one whose policies or associations you don't like while not feeling too bad about voting for the one you prefer. Meanwhile the public has also been brought up on some kind of relativism by journalists and possibly high school English teachers, and everyone seems to share Fox News' skepticism about objectivity in journalism. So inconvenient facts are brushed aside as part of someone else's narrative.

The real question is what we can do about all this. My hope had been that the Republicans would lose so badly that they changed into some sort of kinder, gentler, possibly somewhat libertarian party. In turn the Democrats might move more to the left, and the resulting compromise government would tend to be non-interventionist in foreign policy, egalitarian, and respectful of personal freedom. So much for that. The Republican Party might not change very much at all, but it certainly isn't likely to become kinder or gentler. The market has spoken, and it did not ask for generosity, chivalry, or even decency.

I see two non-dreadful paths ahead. One is that demographic changes mean we don't have results like this much more, if at all, in the future. If the Democratic candidate had been a man then Trump might not have won (although if they only ever put up male candidates that would be dreadful). If the non-white population grows faster than suppression of the non-white vote then there is hope for a non-Republican President in future. Eventually, perhaps, all those angry old white men will die and fantasies of some sort of return to the 1950s will die with them.

Alternatively, perhaps the Democrats can make themselves more appealing to some Trump voters, most obviously members of the working class. According to the Measure of America: "Whites saw the greatest earnings drop between 2000 and 2010, nearly $2,300." I wouldn't recommend targeting whites per se, but people whose earnings have dropped are going to be unhappy and will want both hope and respect. The Democratic Party needs to make it clear that it is concerned about these people and has something to offer them if it is going to get their votes. It's a tall order when jobs are disappearing, but there are things we could do. And Trump has managed to get these votes without having a viable economic plan, so it might be easier than it seems.

None of this might matter if no one believes anything they read, see or hear that doesn't match their prejudices and fantasies. But there is still some room for hope. I think.

Failing that, there's Betjeman:

And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves
Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand
As they have done for centuries, as they will
For centuries to come, when not a soul
Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks,
When England is not England, when mankind
Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea,
Consolingly disastrous, will return
While the strange starfish, hugely magnified,
Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool.         

Poor economics

If you care about economic and philosophical issues to do with poverty then you might be interested in this free online course. It's based on the book Poor Economics by Esther Duflo and Abjhit Banerjee. In the beginning of the book (pp. 4-5) they say that:

This book will not tell you whether aid is good or bad, but it will say whether particular instances of aid did some good or not. We cannot pronounce on the efficacy of democracy, but we do have something to say about whether democracy could be made more effective in rural Indonesia by changing the way it is organized on the ground, and so on.  

In other words, as I understand it, they reject the idea that economics or economists or anyone else can pronounce generally on whether democracy or aid or free markets or any other general solution to poverty works, but they do think that people can identify what works and what does not in particular cases. This sounds right, but it suggests a very modest role for economics as a science. (I say 'suggests' because I still have a lot to learn about all this.)

Two of the first readings required by the course are blog posts for and against the idea that Jeff Sachs' belief in giving away insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) for free has been vindicated by empirical evidence. The first says that:

A new randomized experiment carried out by Jessica Cohen and Pascaline Dupas reaches striking and unambiguous results:

Taken together, our results suggest that cost-sharing ITN programs may have difficulty reaching a large fraction of the populations most vulnerable to malaria. [...] We also find that, for the full range of parameter values, the number of infant lives saved is highest when ITNs are distributed free.    

The second counters that:

Cohen and Dupas have confirmed that demand curves slope downward. More than that, they have found that there is residual demand for bed nets from mothers with new babies in a community that has benefited from extensive demand promotion activities in conjunction with a social marketing campaign for bed nets, which are very highly subsidized, but not free.

In other words, even "striking and unambiguous results" produce next to nothing that can be generalized with confidence. What is found to happen in one region in Kenya is found to happen in that region in Kenya, given the particular circumstances prevailing at the time. Things might be different even in that region at another time.

I don't mean that these findings are worthless. They are at least suggestive, and might eventually add up to more than that. But despite all the praise, my first impression (more impressions coming soon!) is that this cutting-edge work in economics really confirms a lot of the main points made by people generally regarded as anti-economics or anti-social science, especially the point that human life is too complicated and affected by too many variables for anyone to be able to identify universal laws of human behavior.

Drowning children

This article on Peter Singer and choosing how best to help others reminds me that I've been meaning to write something about Singer on the obligation to give until giving more would make us worse off than those we are trying to help. I promised something on G. A. Cohen, but find that I have nothing to say. His paper ("If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're so Rich?") is good, but has no conclusion. So I'll talk about Singer instead. I doubt I'll say anything groundbreaking, but here's what struck me most on re-reading his essay on "Famine, Affluence, and Morality."

One objection to providing food aid that he discusses is the fear that it will only temporarily help people avoid starvation, and that they will just starve a year or two later anyway, living miserable lives in the meantime. Singer says that there is very good evidence for this, so he takes it seriously. Here's his response:

It would then follow from the position reached earlier that one ought to be doing all one can to promote population control (unless one held that all forms of population control were wrong in themselves, or would have significantly bad consequences). Since there are organizations working specifically for population control, one would then support them rather than more orthodox methods of preventing famine.

This makes sense, but there is also something odd about it, it seems to me. I can imagine someone giving to, or working for, an organization that distributes contraceptives or information about birth control in poor countries. But can I imagine an affluent person giving so much to such a charity that they become poor themselves? That sounds fanatical (and vaguely racist, given where the poor countries are, and the seeming fanaticism required to want so badly to limit births in these countries). Of course Singer isn't promoting racism, but he's promoting a view that I can only imagine being held by a racist, i.e. a view that seems at least slightly crazy. It makes sense to care about people who are suffering, but I'm not sure that it makes sense to care about suffering itself. What would be the appropriate attitude to take toward pain or suffering (rather than the person or animal suffering from pain or other hardship)? Disapproval? Dislike? It's not clear to me that I can have an attitude toward pain, hardship, or death. There has to be a victim, and then my thoughts and feelings are about that victim, not the suffering itself. It is their suffering qua theirs (or someone's, at any rate) that I care about. So if they don't exist (because they haven't been born yet) then I can't really care about their possible future suffering. At least not in the same way that I care about actual suffering that is going on now. If a child is drowning then it makes sense to go to great lengths to save him. But to go to the same lengths to prevent a child who is probably going to drown from being born? Scarcely intelligible, it seems to me. Of course it is possible to care about population growth, but there is a difference that seems important to me, however dimly I might be seeing it, that Singer appears to ignore.  

Secondly, he writes as if each of us is completely independent and can spend our money as we choose. I suppose in a way that's true, but it's one thing for an affluent person with no dependents to give till it hurts, another for someone with an elderly parent or young children to care for to sacrifice some of that care for the sake of others. I don't mean that having dependents is an excuse to do nothing for victims of famine, etc., but it complicates things in ways that, again, Singer seems to overlook. In fact I don't think 'complicates' is quite the word, since we all have networks of responsibilities that don't lend themselves to utilitarian calculation. I owe something to my parents and children, and to my wife. I have a responsibility to my neighbours not to let my property fall into too much disrepair. My job requires me to wear respectable clothes. My mental health requires that I not deny myself every pleasure. And so on. Exactly how often must I mow my lawn? How much should I spend on work clothes? If I give away so much money that my children can go to college but not as good a college as I would otherwise have been able to afford is that all right? Even if we think of happiness or pleasure as something measurable and quantifiable I'm not sure that the relevant calculations could ever be done. It would be like trying to predict the weather. And I don't believe that happiness is quantifiable anyway.

Should I do more to help people in need? No doubt. But I don't need Singer's argument to tell me that. Still, it might provide a useful nudge in the right direction.  

Distributive justice: the game(s)

I haven't played with this much, but it looks like fun.

The philosopher's role is just to point out contradictions and entailments

Thanks to Tommi Uschanov I recently read Catherine Wilson's "On Some Alleged Limitations to Moral Endeavor." The title of this post comes from it, as Wilson imagines what Peter Singer would have said to critics who claimed that he ignores the importance of what we care about and is too demanding when he says we should forego many of our pleasures in order to give more to the needy. Roughly speaking (and I have sat on this post long enough that I'm starting to forget the article) Wilson wants to find some alternative to Singer's non-motivating altruism and Thomas Nagel's possibly-seeming complacency.

The single thing that has stuck with me the most from this paper is Nagel's reference to our wanting to spend money on, among other things, stemware. I own wineglasses, but this still tended to push me toward Singer's camp. It's one thing to resist changing your whole way of life in order to give to the poor, but what kind of way of life centrally involves not just using but shopping for stemware? And if we concede this point, if we accept that Nagel has strayed too far from Singer (even if we don't agree with Singer), what else might have to go?

Wilson recommends "letting the lives of people who do not shop, or travel, or enjoy professional entertainment, make their own impression on us" so that "the perception of a gulf between the private and the public sphere is altered and the superstition that one's own good fortune is either morally deserved, or a highly improbable but lucky accident, undermined." This seems like good advice, but it might be easier said than done. Rich people can't just go and make poor friends, after all. There is journalism, though, and fiction, if real-life contact is not an option.

If we do let the lives of the poor make an impression on us, then what? If we can do what Wilson suggests, presumably by informing ourselves about how the other half lives (or belonging to that half) and keeping these people in mind long enough and often enough to influence our thinking about the world (or at least politics) more generally, then we won't want these people to suffer. We probably don't want them to suffer anyway.

Which means that we might not have to change what we care about or stop caring about stemware or anything else in order to behave decently. What we need to do, or so I would like to think, is to bring our various concerns together and, roughly speaking, to rank them. To get them in order. We don't want other people to live miserable or restricted lives. We don't want to be callous. We don't want to be hypocritical. We do want nice stemware (perhaps). OK. Now let's think about (and find out about) how these and other facts relate to each other. Can we have all the things we want? If not, what must go?

This line of thinking is likely to push us in Singer's direction, I think, but it isn't pure Singer or pure utilitarianism. It might lead to nothing more in practice than support for a political party that promotes greater equality. But at least it isn't purely defeatist or positively celebratory of the lifestyle of the comfortable shopper. The danger of my view, or one danger at any rate, is that it is essentially the same as Nagel's. But I don't think it can be, since I agree with Wilson, who rejects Nagel's position. So perhaps the danger is that I'm just too far from Singer. But I am far from Singer, and it's hard for me to believe that this is a bad thing. I'm not just far from him in terms of where we end up but also in terms of where we start from and how we go on from there.

Well, this blog is in danger of withering on the vine if I let other things and a desire not to post rubbish get in the way, so I'm going to hit 'publish.' Next up, G. A. Cohen.

In favor of charity

Brian Leiter links to this piece in the New York Times and encourages "philosophers who seem to think charitable giving is an ethical imperative" to contemplate it. The author, Peter Buffett, makes some odd complaints about charity. Here's one:

Often the results of our decisions had unintended consequences; distributing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in a brothel area ended up creating a higher price for unprotected sex.

How is this bad? If unprotected sex with prostitutes costs more than it used to then, other things being equal, there will be less of it than before. That's a good thing. The problem, or problems (the spread of AIDS and the existence of prostitution), isn't completely solved, but progress has been made. I suppose raising the price of unprotected sex incentivizes it for prostitutes, but if the price is raised by distributing condoms (thereby making unprotected sex rarer) then this distribution is not going to lead to more unprotected sex than before. At worst it will make no difference at all, but that isn't what Buffett describes happening.

But that isn't his main point. Here is something closer to that:

Money should be spent trying out concepts that shatter current structures and systems that have turned much of the world into one vast market. Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex. But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine.

The first sentence of this paragraph has a paradoxical sound to it. Too much commercialism? Let's spend money on fixing that! Maybe that would produce good results, but I doubt we'll find a better alternative to those currently available any time soon. There are already ideas other than neoliberalism and universal commodification out there. They need more political support, and I'm sure their supporters would welcome money from people like Buffett to spend on promoting them. (This is what Leiter seems to want, and I agree with him.) Buffett's next two sentences are false. Wi-Fi on every street corner (again, other things equal) is progress. I agree that the forced prostitution of children is worse than a lack of Wi-Fi. So would everyone. That's why we need to get our priorities straight. But progress in a relatively unimportant area is still progress. Increasing access to technology, education, or safer living conditions is not going to cause people to have worse lives (as measured by such things as how many of them are forced into prostitution).

In short, charitable giving done intelligently is far more likely to do good than harm, and almost certainly is an ethical imperative for most of the people who read Leiter's blog.

More (and better) from Neil Sinhababu at NewAPPS.

Good news

This essay by John Quiggin has cheered me up.  He says many encouraging things, including this:

The ultimate barriers to achieving a good life for all, free of the lash of financial necessity, are neither technological nor environmental. They are in our beliefs, values and social institutions.

If that's right then the most important work to be done is in changing the prevailing beliefs, etc. Not that that is easy to do, but if Quiggin is right then a) we're not all doomed (this is much more important than b), and b) philosophers have the potential to make a significant contribution to the world.  I hope he's right.

Poverty games

I've been meaning to post something on poverty for months, so here goes. I have taught a course called Poverty and Human Capability just once, so I'm no expert, and even that course was team-taught with an economist friend of mine, so I really only taught half of it. Our original plan was for me to teach the first half of the course, looking at questions of definition and giving an introduction to distributive justice. Colleagues at Washington & Lee University with more experience, though, suggested that the political philosophy part would go better if we first taught students about the causes of poverty. They would then be less likely to blame the poor (for alleged laziness or whatever) and to take seriously the idea that others might have a responsibility to do something to help. So we split the course into four quarters: definitions of poverty, causes of poverty, distributive justice, and possible solutions to poverty. It went well, but I think now that maybe causes of poverty should come first. That might sound odd, but the most interesting definition of poverty is based on the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and defended in Martha Nussbaum's Creating Capabilities. And that book is best read after you have read some Rawls and some utilitarian philosophy. So actually the best order seems to be: causes of poverty, ideas about distributive justice, definitions of poverty, solutions to poverty. Between the last two parts I intend next semester also to include a look at how the USA is doing in terms of the development of capability, based on The Measure of America.

That site has some nice tools, including a well-o-meter, which lets you measure your own level of human development (I scored about 8.5 out of 10). There is something questionable about poverty-based games (the apparently defunct Chickens in choppers had a post once making a somewhat similar point, as I recall), but perhaps they have educational value. Here are some more that I have found:

http://playspent.org/ -- a game designed to educate people about what it is like to be poor in the USA

http://secure.pdcnet.org/8525737F00588478/file/94F5EA59723DAEA585257876006979FA/$FILE/teachphil_2011_0034_0001_0021_0036.pdf -- an article about using Second Life to teach social justice and Rawls

http://whoarethejoneses.org/ -- compares your income with that of other people around the world

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/03/white-educated-and-wealthy-congratulations-you-live-in-a-bubble.html -- provides a quiz on how much of a bubble you live in (is aimed primarily at white Americans)

http://www.apaththatsclear.com/index.html -- giving-to-charity games

http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resources/how-rich-you-are.php -- a rich and interactive website making the case that you should give to help the poor in other countries