Abstract
Suppose we ask the question: what institutions will best protect the autonomy of persons in a political community? An answer to this question will involve us considering those institutions that are to occupy a central place in the political, social and economic organisation of that community. The central place given to those institutions will parallel the priority of autonomy within a scheme of values. A political theory with a set of application rules, therefore, will provide us with an indication of the conditions within which its values will be realised.
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Notes and References
For the most recent elaboration of the institutional considerations involved here, see Bruce A. Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980) ss 63.
See Julian Fulbrook, Administrative Justice and the Unemployed (London: Mansell, 1978);
and Harry Street, Justice in the Welfare State (London: Stevens & Sons, 1968).
Bismark U. Mwansasu and Cranford Pratt, Towards Socialism in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House, 1979).
Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, Report, no. 1 (London: HMSO, 1975).
The idea of social security benefits as a form of property or wealth is also to be found in Norman Furniss and Timothy Tilton, The Case for the Welfare State (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1979)
and Charles Reich, ‘The New Property’, Yale Law Journal, LXXIII 5 (1964) pp. 733–87.
G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford University Press, 1967), ss 41–6, pp. 40–3.
Compare J. E. Meade, Planning and the Price Mechanism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1948).
These problems are brilliantly portrayed in Rudolf Bahro, The Alternative in Eastern Europe, trans. David Fernbach (London: Verso, 1981).
I have tried to discuss some of the pressures towards authoritarian control in central planning in Albert Weale, “William Beveridge: ‘The Patriarch as Planner’”, Political Studies, XXVII 2 (1979) pp. 287–93.
Compare Edgar K. Browning, Redistribution and the Welfare System (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1975);
Institute of Fiscal Studies, The Structure and Reform of Direct Taxation, report of a committee chaired by Professor J. E. Meade (London: Allen & Unwin, 1978) p. 269;
Theodore R. Marmor, ‘On Comparing Income Maintenance Alternatives’, American Political Science Review, LXV 1 (1971) pp. 83–96;
and James Tobin and W. Allen Wallis, Welfare Programs: An Economic Appraisal (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1968).
See Hugh Heclo, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden: From Relief to Income Maintenance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974) p. 225.
Theodore R. Marmor, ‘On Comparing Income Maintenance Alternatives’; Robert Pinker, Social Theory and Social Policy (London: Heinemann, 1971) ch. 4;
and Bleddyn Davies, Universality, Selectivity and Social Policy (London: Heinemann, 1978).
W. Beckerman, ‘The Impact of Income Maintenance Payments on Poverty in Britain, 1970’, Economic Journal, LXXXIX (1979) pp. 261–79. Recall, however, the problem mentioned in Chapter 1 (p. 3) of defining the relevant counterfactual by reference to which we are to compare the effectiveness of income maintenance programmes.
For an example of how these arguments have been worked out historically, see Heclo, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden.
Browning, Redistribution and the Welfare System.
J. E. Meade, ‘Poverty in the Welfare State’, Oxford Economic Papers, XXIII 3 (1972) pp. 289–326.
Compare J. E. Meade, The Intelligent Radical’s Guide to Economic Policy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975) ch. 6. I have referred to these sources, rather than the schemes in the Institute for Fiscal Studies Report, because the statement of the principles of operation is clearer in them, being unencumbered by comparison with other schemes.
Compare Christopher Green, Negative Taxes and the Poverty Problem (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1967) ch. V.
James Tobin, Joseph A. Pechman and Peter M. Mieszkowski, ‘Is a Negative Income Tax Practical?’, Yale Law Journal, LXXVII 1 (1967) pp. 1–27. As far as coverage of the working poor is concerned, this proposal resembles the mixture of Back to Beveridge and Modified Social Dividend that Meade discusses.
For a summary of the New Jersey-Pennsylvania results see Peter H. Rossi and Katherine C. Lyall, Reforming Public Welfare (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1976) ch. 6.
For other results see Glen Cain and Harold Watts, Income Maintenance and Labour Supply: Econometric Studies (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973) ch. 9,
and Michael C. Keeley, Philip K. Robins, Robert G. Spiegelman and Richard W. West, ‘The Labour Supply Effects and Costs of Alternative Negative Income Tax Programs’, Journal of Human Resources, XIII 1 (1978) pp. 3–36.
See also Sheldon Danziger, Robert Haveman and Robert Plotnick, ‘How Income Transfer Programs Affect Work, Savings and the Income Distribution: A Critical Review’, Journal of Economic Literature, XIX 3 (1981) pp. 975–1028.
‘I would certainly myself allow anyone to be idle on this low income if they chose that way of life in preference to industrial activity on a higher income. I have little doubt that the community could well afford to carry any such passengers, and the increase in individual liberty and freedom from bureaucratic surveillance would in my opinion be worth the cost’ (Meade, ‘Poverty in the Welfare State’, p. 319).
This is a solution suggested by the committee from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, in the proposal for a two-tier social dividend scheme.
H. B. Acton, The Morals of Markets (London: Longman, 1971) pp. 61–3,
and Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974) pp. 149–50.
For a discussion of these problems see Beckerman, ‘The Impact of Income Maintenance Programmes on Poverty in Britain, 1970’, and A. K. Sen, ‘Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement’, Econometrica, XLIV (1976) pp. 219–31.
For example, J. S. Coleman et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity (Washington, DC: US Dept of Health, Education and Welfare, 1966).
See also Frederick Mosteller and Patrick Daniel Moynihan (eds). On Equality of Educational Opportunity (New York: Random House, 1972).
Raymond Boudon, Education, Opportunity and Social Inequality: Changing Prospects in Western Society (New York: Wiley, 1973);
A. H. Halsey, A. F. Heath and J. M. Ridge, Origins and Destinations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980);
William H. Sewell, Robert M. Hauser and David L. Featherman, Schooling and Achievement in American Society (New York: Academic Press, 1976).
Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy (London: Thames & Hudson, 1958).
Bernard Williams, ‘The Idea of Equality’ in Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (eds), Philosophy, Politics and Society, Series 2 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962) p. 128.
Compare M. F. D. Young (ed.). Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971), where this incommensurability thesis’ is not explicitly stated, but would seem to be implied. For some good examples of cultural exploitation, see the empirical evidence quoted by Nell Keddie in her paper, ‘Classroom Knowledge’.
I have tried to set out some of the relevant issues in Albert Weale, Equality and Social Policy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978) ch. 6.
For an excellent discussion favouring parental choice, see John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
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© 1983 Albert Weale
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Weale, A. (1983). Freedom, Income and Education. In: Political Theory and Social Policy. Studies in Social Policy. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17144-6_4
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