If a person obtains something fairly, the government should not take it away from them. The government would be stealing if they were to take from people when the goods were obtained fairly. If the person had stolen something then it would be fine for the government to take it back and return it to the original and proper owner. Nozick feels that inequality is fine as long as the inequality was fairly made. If one person works to become rich and another person does not work, Nozick sees it as just for one to be rich and the other to be poor. This can be shown in the family example. In the family example there is a family with two children, one child is eighteen and the other is eight . One child is ten years older and has a job, unlike the younger child. According to Nozick the older child having more than the other because the younger child has no source of income is fine. The older child should be able to have more and make choices that benefit them without considering the younger child. The older child's choices do not need to reflect the younger child's interests. The parents who are representing the government in this example, have no right to tell the older child to consider the younger child in all the older child’s choices. The older child is fairly making an inequality between themselves and their sibling. If the older child was stealing from the younger child to make the inequality, then the parents would have a duty to step in to correct the inequality because that would be unfair. Nozick has another aspect to his theory called the Lockean Proviso. Originally the proviso was about land and property rights. One person could not justly take all the fertile land in an area. They could only take a portion of lan... ... middle of paper ... ...ndividual who is receiving the things more than it benefits the individual who is having their things taken away. Rawls justifies this in his book by calling it redistribution and saying it is being done to make a more equal society. Unfortunately, giving theft a different name does not change what it is. Returning to the family example, if the older child was told that their money was being redistributed it would not change the end result. If an inequality is fairly made it is just. If one person has something that does not make another person entitled to some of it because the second person has less. The government should not take from one group and give to another because one has more. Bibliography Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical. 1985. Print. Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, state, and utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Print.
...onstitute injustice. Nosick favors a state in which the dominant protection agency as the only form of "government" serves to protect those who chose to freely participate in the service. The individual is free to go about his life so long as he does not violate an individual or worsen the conditions of the land for others. Having the right to ownership does not mean the right to harm, but rather the right to exclude. Just as I would not steal property from another individual (without fear of the protection agency), how is it just for anyone, including the government, to take earnings from individuals in the form of distribution or taxation? If just acquisition arises from the just history (any form you see fit), than wealth and free spending are simply functions within society with discretion falling under the responsibility of the buyer and seller of the goods.
The “Fairness of Taxation or Wealth Tax” is where taxes are calculated by the net worth of the person or the couple (household). This would be hard for tax collectors to determine each and every component of net worth of a person.
Thus, for the four reasons stated above, Robert Nozick’s topics of transfer of holdings and rectification of holdings within his entitlement theory should be rejected. Not only are Nozick’s propositions inefficient and immoral, they may also create double standards as to what constitutes as an injustice.
Nozick introduces his theory by calling a “minimal state” (Nozick 149) the only justifiable state that does not infringe on the rights of the people living in this state. Nozick as a libertarian, believes in the freedom of the individual over all else., Nozick says, “There is no one natural dimension or weighted sum or combination of a small number of natural dimensions that yields the distributions generated in accordance with the principle of entitlement”(Nozick 157). The patterns, upon which certain sections argue for the distribution of wealth, such as poverty etc., do not impress Nozick at all. Continuing the belief of individual freedom over all else, Nozick then presents his entitlement theory, which advocates that all of one’s possessions sho...
There are many people that think there is economic and wealth equality in the United States , but with all the statistics I provided it can be clearly seen that inequality in America is a serious issue , and it's getting worse with every year. I do believe that there should be some income inequality because that drives people to succeed , but I also believe that too much inequality limits a lot of people from achieving financial success.
Income inequality not only harms us fiscally, but also affects our mental and physical wellbeing; therefore, it is important to identify the right ways to control wealth distribution among people.
Inequality exist and is high in America because the amount of income and wealth that is distributed through power. In America the income distribution is very inequality and the value of a person wealth is based on their income with their debts subtracted. “As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)” (Domhoff, 2011). In contrary the poor do not get ahead and the rich get more. Americans are judged and placed in class categories through their home ownership which translates to wealth. Americans social class is often associated with their assets and wealth. “People seek to own property, to have high incomes, to have interesting and safe jobs, to enjoy the finest in travel and leisure, and to live long and healthy lives” (Domhoff, 2011). Power indicates how these “values” are not distributed equally in American society. Huge gains for the rich include cuts in capital gains and dividends and when tax rates decrease for the tiny percent of Americans income is redistributed. Taxes directly affect the wealth and income of Americans every year.
Inequality as previously mentioned is a subject that gets debated when brought up and in any debate there is two sides. In class we have discussed both side of the story of inequality, and it has give me a better perspectives of income inequality. When discussion income inequality, we brought up the concept of the economic pie in which states that the economic pie is a reference to the way income gets distributed among the lower, middle, and higher class of America. So the concept of the economic pie states that the rich is getting richer, so they are
Liberty and equality belong to the same category as moral conceptions. Despite both aiming at improving lives of the people, their relationship is in conflict so that we have to choose between them. Liberty and equality have been discussed over and over and those discussions have been generally inconclusive. Philosophers and scholars who embarked on this discussion have ended up with different notions. From egalitarian point of view, liberty and equality cannot coexist peacefully and they clash in the area of property rights. Property is infringed by government to compensate those who naturally do not own much property. On the contention of the two concepts, Ronald Dworkin argues that if there really were a conflict between equality and liberty, equality would have to win (Dworkin, 2000). This sentiment implies that the two terms are rivals. Let us take equality of wealth as a goal; achieving and maintaining equal wealth amongst citizens would require violation of liberty. Maintaining equality of wealth would require a redistribution of resources over a time such as taking wealth from other people and give it to others infringing upon the right to private property. Dworkin stresses that egalitarians are mainly concerned with socio-economic equality imposed by the state through progressive taxes and welfare provision (Dworkin, 2000). Basing on the original position that all men have equal access to goods, it will be justifiable for the state to introduce redistributive taxes on the rich who do not have any justified claim to their property. This paper will further examine the conflict between liberty and equality by looking at their definitions from the perspective of different philosophers and scholars.
Some economists says that it is compulsion to have inequality but excessive inequality is very dangerous for economy.
The current government takes money from the rich to give away to the poor in a welfare cheque and do nothing to free them of their inability to survive on their own. No one should be given a free home or a free meal or they will never learn how to properly care for themselves. Why should another person be forced to pay for it? If someone was unable to provide for themselves or their family, then we should have developed a system to temporarily help educate them back into a job to make them stronger and self-sufficient. Instead, the government robs from the rich through taxation and gives a survival token to the poor.
Nozick agrees with the liberty principle proposed by Rawls, but he disagrees with the equality principle and the fashion in which resources are distributed. I believe the historical principle of distribution is one strength of Nozick’s ideas. The historical principle of distribution states that the justice of any distribution does not depend on how closely it resembles any form of an equality pattern but how the distribution came about (959). I also agree with the theory that people are entitled to anything they acquired voluntarily and anything that is transferred to them voluntarily (958). Nozick does not agree with redistribution of wealth because taking resources from one person to benefit others is not necessarily voluntary. The biggest weaknesses of Nozick’s idea of equality comes from the idea that taxation and federally funded programs would be unjust forcing everything to be owned privately. This creates the most issues because people are self-interested and the virtue of market may not create the balance which Nozick proposed. Public school systems and public roads being deemed illegitimate would create issues with access. Also, making taxation illegal would make it difficult to have services like a police force, fire department, court system, or penal system because they would have to be paid by the individual directly. The police and court systems could become corrupt
Distributive Property or distributive justice is the economic framework of a society that asserts the rightful allocations of property among its citizens. Due to the limited amount of resources that is provided in a society, the question of proper distribution often occurs. The ideal answer is that public assets should be reasonably dispersed so that every individual receives what constitutes as a “justified share”; here is where the conflict arises. The notion of just distribution, however, is generally disagreed upon as is the case with Robert Nozick and John Rawls. These men have different takes on how property should be justly distributed. Nozick claims that any sort of patterned distribution of wealth is inequitable and that this ultimately reduces individual liberty. Rawls on the other hand, prioritizes equality over a diverse group where the distribution of assets among a community should be in the favor of the least advantaged. The immediate difference between the two is that both men have separate ideas on the legitimacy of governmental redistribution of resources; however I intend to defend Nozick’s theory by pointing out significant weaknesses in Rawls’s proposition.
...egarding their classes within the state, which is essentially the idea of maximin. Therefore Rawls' approach to justice conveys the notion that our response to poverty should begin on a state level, for it is through the building of just state institutions that his two main principles can begin to take effect, which in turn, as Rawls' would argue, would lead to a more just and equal state which benefited persons of all social rankings.
Income inequality continues to increase in today’s world, especially in the United States. Income inequality means the unequal distribution between individuals’ assets, wealth, or income. In the Twilight of the Elites, Christopher Hayes, a liberal journalist, states the inequality gap between the rich and the poor are increasing widening, and there need to have things done - tax the rich, provide better education - in order to shortening the inequality gap. America is a meritocratic country, which means that everybody has equal opportunity to be successful regardless of their class privileges or wealth. However, equality of opportunity does not equal equality of outcomes. People are having more opportunities to find a better job, but their incomes are a lot less compared to the top ten percent rich people. In this way, the poor people will never climb up the ladder to high status and become millionaires. Therefore, the government needs to increase all the tax rates on rich people in order to reduce income inequality.