George Osborne and the Government claim, quite rightly, that they want the distribution of pain involved in the current spending round to be 'fair'. However, the whole concept of fairness is a bit tricky.
Intuitively, we could say that it is fair if everyone pays the same amount.
Well, that doesn't work as losing £1000 will be a real hardship for someone, but barely noticeable to someone else.
Adib Roy under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
Is it fair for someone to have to share with others?
Hence, most of us ending up claiming that it is fair for the rich to bear more of the burden than the poor. However, that is not obviously right either.
Consider, as an analogy, two people marooned on an island. One of them, call him 'Conscientious', spends his day clearing the ground, tilling it, and planting, cultivating and eventually storing crops. The other, call her 'Feckless', spends her day lying on the beach. Winter comes, all the fruit from the trees vanishes, and Feckless is hungry. Does Feckless have any claim on Conscientious' food? That is, is it fair for Conscientious to have to 'pay' for Feckless, just because he has more resources?
The point is that it is not how much you have that matters, but how you acquired it. If the rich in our society acquired their money through application and hard work, then it is not obviously fair for them to have to pay a greater share than the poor.
This, of course, is a view we find expressed in some newspapers: why should 'hard-working families' have to bear the burden of paying for all of those who have not applied themselves to earning a living?
There are a couple of replies to this. First, Feckless may not actually be feckless. Perhaps she is injured, and cannot work. She does not lie on the beach because she wants to, but because that is all she is able to do.
In that case, she might have more of a claim on the food. Analogously, one might think that those people in our society who are prevented from working by disability ought to have to bear less of the burden than the comparatively well-off.
The second reply is rather more radical; we can call it the stacked deck reply.
It comes in two parts. First, there is no level playing-field. It is not invariably true, but generally those who are born into positions of advantage (rich parents, many opportunities, family connections) do better than those who do not.
Conscientious deserves his food because he worked for it. What if he just happened to find the only bit of land on the island that could be cultivated, and would not let Feckless anywhere near it? If the rich in our society generally are rich because they were born into positions of advantage, then, again, it is not obvious that they should not give up a greater proportion of their wealth than those who did not happen to have those advantages.
The second part of the 'stacked deck' reply is even more radical. In our society at least, intelligent, hard-working, conscientious people are likely to do better than the stupid, lazy and feckless people.
However, people do not generally choose to be stupid, lazy and feckless – it is more likely that they are born that way. Conscientious was born conscientious, and Feckless was born feckless.
However, why should this make a difference? It could have been the other way round. Why should someone be rewarded simply because they happen to have struck lucky in nature's lottery? Again, one might think the unlucky ones have some claim on the resources of the lucky ones.
The second part of the 'stacked deck' reply is too radical to make it into practical politics. The first part is not.
Overcoming such inequalities is what governments mean by equality of opportunity; we should all have the same chance in life.
However, given the comprehensive failure of all governments to deliver anything like equality of opportunity (which is a relief in a way, as it would be impossible without massive coercion) it probably is fairer for Mr Osborn to make the rich pay, proportionally, a little more.
Reviewing the spending review
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Andrew Parsons/The Conservative Party under CC-BY-NC-SA licence
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By altogetherfool via Flickr under Creative Commons licence
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'It is not invariably true,
'It is not invariably true, but generally those who are born into positions of advantage (rich parents, many opportunities, family connections) do better than those who do not.'
My partner and I recently started a list of 'nepotistic parasites on UK TV'. Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall, Ralph Fiennes, Tara Palmer Tomkinson...the list goes on. Those who appear on, say, the BBC channels are almost all from privileged backgrounds and have been to Eton, Harrow, etc. It isn't fair that these people should get better jobs for knowing the 'right' people, or going to the expensive schools.