Word: glick
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News Editor for This Issue: Joseph R. Palmore '91 Night Editors: Jonathan S. Cohn '91 Seth A. Gitell '91 Melissa R. Hart '91 Matthew M. Hoffman '91 Tara A. Nayak '92 Joshua M. Sharfstein '91 Eric S. Solowey '91 Editorial Editors: Steven J.S. Glick '91 John L. Larew '91 Feature Editors: Joseph R. Palmore '91 Rebecca L. Walkowitz '92 Sports Editors: Michael R. Grunwald '92 Michael D. Stankiewicz '90-'91 Photo Editors: Michael Koehler '92 Business Editor: Timothy B. Paydos '92 Copy Editor: Brett R. Huff...
...real problem seems to lie, not with the Difference Principle or with Ec 10's examination of it, but with Glick's failure to recognize how radical the Rawlsian theory really...
...Glick complains that the problem set creates an unfair dilemma, since it assumes that income redistribution entails enormous social costs. He asks us to imagine instead that slicing the pie more equally won't shrink it at all, allowing him to hand the citizens of the Rawlsian economy a hefty $99,000 each. Surely, he suggests, the nefarious authors of Ec 10 problem sets could only have come up with the original example as a ploy to discredit the Difference Principle...
...problem set's figures are exaggerated, of course, but Glick's alternative seems to miss the point completely. In an economic system where redistribution was easy and painless, it would be a straightforward matter to forbid any inequality whatsoever. It's precisely because redistribution does require trade-offs that Rawls' theory needs the Difference Principle at all, as a democratic check on the inequalities which no economic system can do without...
Rawls does not simply demand, as Glick puts it, that "the inequalities in society be harnessed to provide some benefit to the poor." Rather, the interests of the poor are the only justification for those inequalities, and if their standard of living can be raised at all, then no sacrifice is too great on the part of those better off. If Martin Feldstein and his section leaders think this idea is self-evidently ridiculous, maybe they--and Glick--should think again...