Equality, Luck and Hierarchy

In a recent article in this journal, Professor Samuel Scheffler criticizes what he takes to be an important new movement in political philosophy: "luck egalitarianism." ¹ He identifies me as a luck egalitarian, and I challenge that characterization here. But I have a more general worry about his thesis. He complains that luck egalitarians subordinate social and political equality to economic equality: he says that my own account of economic equality, for example, is "administrative" and presupposes a hierarchical society. He, on the contrary, takes social and political equality to be fundamental, and supposes that economic inequality is objectionable only if and to the extent that it undermines that social and political equality. ² The impulse to see one or another dimension of equality as fundamental is misconceived, however. A genuine society of equals must aim at equal stake as well as equal voice and equal status for its citizens. We must build conceptions of these different dimensions of equality that fit with and draw upon one another, not suppose that either economic or political or social equality is more fundamental than the others.

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Although Scheffler identifies me as a luck egalitarian, his definition of that movement in fact excludes me. I do believe that luck should play less of a role in fixing the distribution of wealth than it now does in, for example, the United States. But I do not hold the much more extreme view he attributes to the movement. He says that "[Luck egalitarianism] has different variants, but the central idea is common to all of these variants. The core idea is that . . . inequalities deriving from unchosen features of people's circumstances are unjust." ³ I did not defend that "core idea" in my book, Sovereign Virtue. ⁴ "The general ambition of equality of resources, . . ." I said, "is to make circumstances equal under some appropriate version of the envy test." ⁵ I then argued, over many pages, that the appropriate version of that test requires not, as Scheffler's "core idea" suggests, that people be fully compensated for any bad luck after it has occurred, but rather that people be made equal, so far as this is possible, in their opportunity to insure or provide against bad luck before it has occurred, or, if that is not possible, that people be awarded the compensation it is likely they would have insured to have if they had had that opportunity. ⁶ That latter goal is not a compromise or second-best solution that accepts some injustice out of necessity. It is what equality, properly understood, itself requires. ⁷

Scheffler says that "luck egalitarianism denies that a person's natural talent, creativity, intelligence, innovative skill, or entrepreneurial ability can be the basis for legitimate inequalities." ⁸ I argued that such inequal-ities are perfectly legitimate if a scheme of redistributive taxation is in place that mitigates those inequalities by indemnifying people who lack such skills in the amount most of them would have insured to receive had insurance been available on fair terms. ⁹ He says that luck egalitarianism holds "that any extra income deriving from people's choices should, in principle, be exempt from redistributive taxation." ¹⁰ I argue for a progressive income tax that is modeled on hypothetical insurance and therefore falls on total income with no exemption of that kind. Luck egalitarians, he says, insist that "the fact that a person's urgent medical needs can be traced to his own negligence or foolishness of high-risk behavior" makes it "legitimate to deny him the care he needs," and that "people automatically forfeit any claim to assistance if it turns out that their urgent needs are the result of prudent or well-considered choices that simply turned out badly." ¹¹ I argued that equal concern requires that everyone be given the benefit of a hypothetical insurance regime that would meet the "urgent needs" he has in mind. ¹² He says that luck egalitarianism "encourages . . . fellow citizens both to...