Abstract
In a recent issue of The Public Interest (vol. 31, Spring 1973), Lester Thurow, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argued that economic justice requires radical changes in the distribution of income and wealth in this country, and proposed specific redistributive measures. I shall argue three points here:
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(a)
The measures proposed by Thurow are highly questionable.
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(b)
There is no basis in economics for the concept of economic justice from which these measures are derived.
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(c)
The economist has an important role to play in a study and discussion of the distribution of income and wealth, but it is not the role that Thurow set for himself.
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Notes and references
See, for example, John M. Peterson and Charles T. Stewart Jnr, Employment Effects of Minimum Wage Rates (Washington DC, 1969), and studies cited therein; Marvin Kosters and Finis Welch], ‘The Effects of Minimum Wages on the Distribution of Changes in Aggregate Employment’, American Economic Review, 62 (1972), p. 32
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© 1983 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Posner, R.A. (1983). Economic justice and the economist. In: Letwin, W. (eds) Against Equality. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17175-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17175-0_16
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