Simplifying "Inequality"

Amongst egalitarians there has been much controversy of late concerning precisely what it is that ought to be distributed equally. Proposed candidates have, most famously, included welfare, resources, ¹ primary social goods, ² basic capabilities, ³ opportunities for welfare, ⁴ and access to advantage. ⁵ Rather than attempt to decide this issue here, let us call whatever it is that egalitarians should be concerned to have distributed equally "G". G could thus be well-being, income, wealth, capabilities, opportunities, or whatever. What egalitarians had generally seemed to have taken for granted was that equality concerns the pattern of distribution of G within a society. However, all such "holistic" approaches have recently been powerfully challenged by Larry Temkin, who argues that inequality is, instead, "a complex, essentially comparative, individualistic notion." ⁶

Temkin's path-breaking approach is individualistic and comparative in that it focuses upon the complaints that individuals can make with respect to the inequalities they face. And "inequality" is a complex notion, in Temkin's view, because the various inequalities may be conceived in a variety of ways. In total, Temkin endorses twelve different ways of viewing inequalities.

For example, whenever an unequal distribution of G obtains, we might be especially concerned with how the worst-off people with respect to G fare. Hence, we might believe that "if the average level of complaint of the worst-off group is larger in one of two worlds, that is the world that is worst." ⁷ Thus, we might be led to conclude that we ought to employ a "maximin principle of equality"--one that tells us to "maximize the relative position of the worst-off group." ⁸ And once the relative position has been maximized, Temkin argues, such a principle would have us "then minimize the size of that group, as long as we were not thereby increasing the complaint of the remaining members." ⁹

Alternatively, we might consider all complaints regarding inequality to be equally legitimate. And we might hold the view that the larger the number of complaints, the worse the inequality that obtains. But we might also hold that the more G one person possesses relative to another, then the worse the inequality, because the greater is the magnitude of the latter's complaint. We might therefore conclude that we should ascertain the magnitude of the complaints regarding inequality which each worse-off individual has and then simply sum them all up--the "additive principle of equality."

Or we might feel that while we ought to sum up all the complaints within a society regarding inequality, we ought to do so in such a manner that the greater the magnitude of a person's complaint, the greater weight it ought to be given--a "weighted additive principle of equality." (For example, we might square the magnitude of each complaint.)

But each of these principles could be employed relative to a different view of complaints. For example, we might be concerned with how people fare relative to the amount of G possessed by the average person. So, each of the three principles of equality could be employed "relative to the average view" of complaints. Alternatively, we might be concerned with how people fare relative to the amount of G possessed by the best-off person. So, each of the three principles could be employed "relative to the best-off person view" of complaints. Or we might be concerned with how people fare relative to all those better off than they are with respect to G. So, each of the three principles could be employed "relative to the all those better off view" of complaints. This provides nine different ways of judging inequalities.

But inequalities could further be viewed in terms of how far a world "deviates from a state of absolute equality" ¹⁰ --what Temkin labels "deviation." Alternatively, egalitarians may well Find themselves feeling most offended when "just a few are badly off while the vast majority are well off, since the inequality then seems...