Suppose there is an inequality between men and women on some socially valued dimension (e.g., money, power, respect), such that men have more of “it” than women. We could (and maybe should) graph it like this:
Now suppose someone thinks this inequality is bad and wants to resolve it. How should this happen? Here’s a few ways you could do it:
Each strategy (with the exception of #4) has its place. Strategies #1 and #2 are good in circumstances where one group has too little of something everyone should have, or too much of something no one really needs. But those are pretty niche — Strategy #3 is where most inequality resolution happens. Resolving inequalities typically means taking something from (or stop giving something to) members of the privileged class, and redistributing it among the class of people who lack that something.
“Tax the rich”
Being enmeshed in very progressive spaces, we often encounter people talking about inequality. Those conversations, however, are almost always about one thing: taxing the rich. Also known as Strategy #2. Stuff like this is endemic:
“Tax the rich”, “make the rich pay”, “billionaires should not exist” are all slogans that are 100% directed towards tearing down the rich, with an implicit-at-best connection to how such actions would benefit the poor. We dislike this.
In his book “On Inequality”, Harry Frankfurt asks the question: “why do many people appear to be more distressed by the rich than by the poor?” This generally tracks with our personal experiences in more progressive spaces. There is an awful lot of anger directed towards the rich, and very little in the way of policies propose to deal with poverty. This is a problem because, as Frankfurt argues, inequality is not inherently bad. Rather, inequality is bad insofar as it means that some people have bad lives, not insofar as it means that some people have better lives than others. To put it visually:
On Frankfurt’s view, the inequality gap gets far more attention than the gap between people’s needs and what they actually have. The former is not inherently a problem, but the latter is. If the world were set up such that everyone’s needs were met, then inequality wouldn’t be a huge issue:
This can, of course, go the other way too. Some people can have too much, such that it is worth bringing them down. But what defines “too much” is not a gap between the rich and poor, but rather whether the rich have *so much* that they begin detrimentally affecting the poor. As Frankfurt puts it:
“To focus on inequality, which is not in itself objectionable, is to misconstrue the challenge we actually face. Our basic focus should be on reducing both poverty and excessive affluence. That may very well entail, of course, a reduction of inequality. But the reduction of inequality cannot itself be our most essential ambition. Economic equality is not a morally compelling ideal. The primary goal of our efforts must be to repair a society in which many have far too little, while others have the comfort and influence that go with having more than enough.”
Importantly, this does not mean reducing inequality cannot be a good goal:
“Even if economic equality itself and as such is not important, commitment to an egalitarian economic policy might be indispensable for promoting the attainment of various desirable social and political ends. Also, the most feasible approach to reaching universal economic sufficiency might actually turn out to be, in fact, a pursuit of equality. That economic equality is not a good in itself leaves open the possibility, obviously, that it may be instrumentally valuable as a necessary condition for the attainment of goods that do genuinely possess intrinsic value.”
In other words, “tax the rich” isn’t inherently bad. Taxes are a fantastic way for governments to raise funds for valuable social projects. Taxes are how we get transit systems, functioning schools, and gigantic rubber ducks in the Toronto harbour.
But calls to “tax the rich” need to actually be coupled with proposals for what to do with that money. It’s not enough to tax billionaires out of existence — that’s step 1. Steps 2 through 100 are how you translate that money into benefits for the poor.
Inequality or Poverty Relief?
But this is where things get awkward. Because inequality is rising at the very same time that the global poor live the best lives they ever have in the history of… well, ever. If you’ve ever argued about socialism or capitalism in a reddit forum, then you’ve probably seen some version of this graph:
Not only are inequality and poverty alleviation temporally correlated, there’s a decent case that they are causally related too. When poor countries open themselves up to global free markets (such as China in ‘78), they end up having populaces that are both growing in wealth at all sectors of the economy, as well as growing inequality between the rich and the poor. This is where a focus on inequality and a focus on helping the poor end up in tension. Would you rather have:
An economy that is equal, but everyone is equally poor
An economy that in unequal, but the poor are still better off (though less better-off than the rich)
An inequality-focuser would prefer #1, but Frankfurt (and many economists) would say that #2 is better because it makes poor people better off.
This is why we don’t like the “tax the rich” slogan. But to be honest, we don’t have a good alternative. “Tax the rich to fund valuable social programs” just doesn’t have the same ring to it. We’re open to suggestions.