IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bus/jphile/v2y2008i1p5-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Incentives and reflective equilibrium in distributive justice debates

Author

Listed:
  • Julian Lamont

    (University of Queensland)

Abstract

For the last thirty years one of the dominant economic policies has been the cutting of the top marginal tax rates. While this policy has been partly motivated by the self-interest of high income earners, it also has had considerable theoretical support from a wide range of distributive justice theorists starting with John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice in 1971. Rawls argued that if the incentives created by inequality maximized the position of the least advantaged then they were morally justified. There have been many variants of this position since. The most common theme of them is that incentives to work harder and innovate, although creating inequality, are morally justified because of the greater good generated by the resultant increase in GDP. The main policy instrument available to governments to create such incentive has been the cutting of the top marginal income rates and this has been done systematically across all industrialized nations. The method of wide reflective equilibrium requires us to use the best consensus from economics in our reasoning about distributive justice. The systematic cutting of tax rates over thirty years has provided a reasonable experiment on the thesis that such cutting provides an overall increased labor supply and resultant increase in GDP. The suggestion of this paper is that a reasonable consensus can now be reached that, over the ranges of inequality and GDP that we have had over the last 50 years and are likely to have over the next 50 years, such incentives do not provide the claimed benefits. Hence, we are getting increased inequality for no compensating benefit.

Suggested Citation

  • Julian Lamont, 2008. "Incentives and reflective equilibrium in distributive justice debates," The Journal of Philosophical Economics, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, The Journal of Philosophical Economics, vol. 2(1), pages 5-19, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:bus:jphile:v:2:y:2008:i:1:p:5-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jpe.ro/pdf.php?id=2854
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://jpe.ro/?id=revista&p=137
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Alesina & Dani Rodrik, 1994. "Distributive Politics and Economic Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 465-490.
    2. Robert A. Moffitt & Mark Wilhelm, 1998. "Taxation and the Labor Supply: Decisions of the Affluent," NBER Working Papers 6621, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Pak Hung Mo, 2000. "Income Inequality and Economic Growth," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 293-315, August.
    4. Clarke, George R. G., 1995. "More evidence on income distribution and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 403-427, August.
    5. Austan Goolsbee, 1999. "Evidence on the High-Income Laffer Curve from Six Decades of Tax Reform," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 30(2), pages 1-64.
    6. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1994. "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 600-621, June.
    7. Tom Clark & Andrew Leicester, 2004. "Inequality and two decades of British tax and benefit reform," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 25(2), pages 129-158, June.
    8. Ann Harding, 1993. "Lifetime vs Annual Tax‐Transfer Incidence: How Much Less Progressive?," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 69(2), pages 179-192, June.
    9. Showalter, Mark H. & Thurston, Norman K., 1997. "Taxes and labor supply of high-income physicians," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 73-97, October.
    10. Gottschalk, Peter & Smeeding, Timothy M., 2000. "Empirical evidence on income inequality in industrialized countries," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 261-307, Elsevier.
    11. Lars Osberg, 2003. "Understanding Growth and Inequality Trends: The Role of Labour Supply in the US and Germany," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 29(s1), pages 163-184, January.
    12. repec:bla:ecorec:v:69:y:1993:i:205:p:179-91 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. MaCurdy, Thomas, 1992. "Work Disincentive Effects of Taxes: A Reexamination of Some Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(2), pages 243-249, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ademola Obafemi Young, 2019. "Growth Impacts of Income Inequality: Empirical Evidence From Nigeria," Research in World Economy, Research in World Economy, Sciedu Press, vol. 10(3), pages 226-262, December.
    2. Christophe Ehrhart, 2009. "The effects of inequality on growth: a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature," Working Papers 107, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    3. David Castells & Vicente Royuela, 2012. "Agglomeration, Inequality and Economic Growth: Cross-section and panel data analysis," ERSA conference papers ersa12p492, European Regional Science Association.
    4. Shinhye Chang & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2018. "Causality Between Per Capita Real GDP and Income Inequality in the U.S.: Evidence from a Wavelet Analysis," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 269-289, January.
    5. Andrea Asoni, 2008. "Protection Of Property Rights And Growth As Political Equilibria," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 953-987, December.
    6. Epstein, Gil S. & Spiegel, Uriel, 2001. "Natural inequality, production and economic growth," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 463-473, September.
    7. Orsetta Causa & Alain de Serres & Nicolas Ruiz, 2015. "Can pro-growth policies lift all boats?: An analysis based on household disposable income," OECD Journal: Economic Studies, OECD Publishing, vol. 2015(1), pages 227-268.
    8. Asli Demirgüç-Kunt & Ross Levine, 2009. "Finance and Inequality: Theory and Evidence," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 287-318, November.
    9. Josef ZweimüLler, 2000. "Inequality, Redistribution, and Economic Growth," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 1-20, March.
    10. Dierk Herzer & Sebastian Vollmer, 2012. "Inequality and growth: evidence from panel cointegration," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(4), pages 489-503, December.
    11. Nasfi Fkili Wahiba & Mahmoudi Dina, 2023. "Technological Change, Growth and Income Inequality," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 13(1), pages 121-131, January.
    12. Martin Ravallion, 2012. "Why Don't We See Poverty Convergence?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 504-523, February.
    13. Foellmi, Reto & Josef Zweim¸ller, 2002. "Heterogeneous Mark-ups, Demand Composition, and the Inequality-Growth Relation," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2002 76, Royal Economic Society.
    14. Enea Baselgia & Reto Foellmi, 2022. "Inequality and growth: a review on a great open debate in economics," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-5, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Carola Grün & Stephan Klasen, 2001. "Growth, income distribution and well‐being in transition countries," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 9(2), pages 359-394, July.
    16. Carola Grün & Stephan Klasen, 2003. "Growth, Income Distribution, and Well-Being: Comparisons across Space and Time," CESifo Working Paper Series 837, CESifo.
    17. Bourguignon, Francois & Morrisson, Christian, 1998. "Inequality and development: the role of dualism," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 233-257.
    18. Blaise Gnimassoun & Isabelle Do Santos, 2021. "Robust structural determinants of public deficits in developing countries," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(9), pages 1052-1076, February.
    19. Casey, Gregory P. & Owen, Ann L., 2014. "Inequality and Fractionalization," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 32-50.
    20. Reto Foellmi & Josef Zweimuller, 2006. "Income Distribution and Demand-Induced Innovations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(4), pages 941-960.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    distributive justice; incentives; inequality; income; tax; reflective equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bus:jphile:v:2:y:2008:i:1:p:5-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Valentin Cojanu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aseeero.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.