Abstract
This chapter seeks to identify who or what is in fact a moral agent that might deserve a distributive justice reward. Reviewing the empirical research into intergenerational earnings dynamics, this chapter highlights a number of exclusions that the Just Deserts proposal would not recommend, including individuals with outcomes valued at zero. Second, this chapter argues that the individual moral agent ought to be understood as persisting across their lifetime—thus, the desert-relation is a correspondence between lifetime “value contributed” and lifetime “economic resources.” The chapter then highlights some interesting theoretical and policy puzzles that follow from this.
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Notes
- 1.
Even in Sweden, such administrative income data is readily available to researchers beginning only in 1968. Cf. Björklund et al. (2011).
- 2.
- 3.
For the present, I focus on lifetime compensation. Wealth is of course subject to the same joint distribution dependent upon chance and merit. While there is disagreement, economists’ average estimate is that 50% of capital accumulation in the United States stems from gifts or bequests, not autonomous effort. Murphy and Nagel (2004), 116; Beckert (2008).
- 4.
Solon (1992).
- 5.
- 6.
“The most firmly established result in this area of research is that intergenerational reproduction [i.e., elasticity of earned incomes] is lowest in the Nordic countries and highest in the United States (with a correlation coefficient two-thirds higher than in Sweden).” Piketty (2014), 484.
- 7.
- 8.
Atkinson (2015), 18.
- 9.
Such changes are in fact interesting drivers of household inequality as high-earning men and high-earning women began to marry since the 1980s. Schwartz (2010).
- 10.
As mentioned in Chap. 4, this dynamism is a key feature in the argument for ex post equality of opportunity.
- 11.
Almås et al. (2011).
- 12.
For a discussion of the difficulties of estimating lifetime income, cf. Benus and Morgan (1975).
- 13.
In contrast to Aaberge et al., we are not interested in measuring “permanent income” once an individual is eligible for retirement, but the dynamic measure of endowment—a quantity that exists when one is age 10, 35, 42, or 88. Cf. Aaberge et al. (2011).
- 14.
Note that I have very much rejected the claim that “An efficient ability tax cannot contend with a dynamic endowment.” Sugin (2011), 252.
- 15.
Almås et al. (2011).
- 16.
Parfit (1971).
- 17.
Note, however, that Fleurbaey presents an extremely interesting discussion of second chances, that is, how to manage new moral agents within the same “person.” Fleurbaey (2008).
- 18.
Sher connects this “persistence” or stability over time to our status as deliberating agents. Sher (1987), chap. 9.
- 19.
Without wishing to commit fully to methodological or ontological individualism, the Just Deserts proposal is certainly individual-centered. Cf. Robeyns (2005).
- 20.
cf. Holtug and Lippert-Rasmussen (2007), 10ff.; Daniels (1996), 259–264; Nagel (1991), 69; Dworkin (1981b), 304–305; Rawls (1999 (1971)), 56.
- 21.
McKerlie (2007), 172. Stated differently, there is no such thing as, and thus no problems raised by, intrapersonal desert. The Just Deserts proposal is, however, quite open to the possibility that someone might generate a conceptually compelling, empirically driven method to discount autonomous effort that belonged to “another” moral agent in a prior period of the same lifetime. Cf. Fleurbaey on “second chances.” Fleurbaey (2008).
- 22.
- 23.
Wang et al. (2013).
- 24.
Pointing to the need for endowment-based policies rather than universal policies such as an increased official retirement age. Coronado et al. (2000).
- 25.
Piketty (2014).
- 26.
Even if for extra-desert reasons, we put capital income or even both capital income and capital under a different distributive justice regime.
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Dwyer, J.d.l.T. (2020). The Individual Moral Agent. In: Chance, Merit, and Economic Inequality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21126-4_9
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