A Brief History Of Equality Pdf Download ((EXCLUSIVE))
Tylor Martinez
Thomas Piketty helped put inequality at the center of political debate. Now, he offers an ambitious program for addressing it. The revitalized democratic socialism he proposes goes beyond the welfare state by calling for guaranteed employment, inheritance for all, power-sharing in corporations, and new rules for globalization. This is political economy on a grand scale, a starting point for debate about the future of progressive politics.
A Brief History of Equality is a literally exceptional book. Thomas Piketty documents the economic growth and moral progress humanity has experienced over the past three centuries and draws a new inspiration from this history. Others who emphasize progress succumb to flatfooted views of well-being, technocratic fear of politics, and quietism about justice. But Piketty confronts historical progress with a subtle understanding of human flourishing, a keen appreciation for political struggle, and a deep commitment to a more just world. In this way, Piketty makes past progress into a call to continue the struggle for justice, with stronger historical foundations, a deeper understanding of the present, and a clearer vision for the future.
A profound and optimistic call to action and reflection. For Piketty, the arc of history is long, but it does bend toward equality. There is nothing automatic about it, however: as citizens, we must be ready to fight for it, and constantly (re)invent the myriad of institutions that will bring it about. This book is here to help.
In this 288-page book targeting an audience of citizens, not economists, Piketty summarizes his two previous books, his 2014 696-page Capital in the Twenty-First Century[4] and his 2019 1150-page book Capital and Ideology.[5][6] In Capital, Piketty said that a possible remedy for inequality lay in a "global tax on wealth".[7] In A Brief History, he developed the concept of a progressive increase in the tax on the wealthy.[6]
Equality
Equality is about equal rights for all citizens before the law. The principle of equality between women and men underpins all European policies and is the basis for European integration. It applies in all areas. The principle of equal pay for equal work became part of the Treaty of Rome in 1957.
In the 1970s, disability rights activists lobbied Congress and marched on Washington to include civil rights language for people with disabilities into the 1972 Rehabilitation Act. In 1973, the Rehabilitation Act was passed, and for the first time in history, civil rights of people with disabilities were protected by law.
Proportional equality in the treatment and distribution of goods topersons involves at least the following concepts or variables: Two ormore persons \((P_1, P_2)\) and two or more allocations of goods topersons \((G)\) and \(X\) and \(Y\) as the quantity in whichindividuals have the relevant normative quality \(E\). This can berepresented as an equation with fractions or as a ratio. If \(P1\) has\(E\) in the amount of \(X\) and if \(P_2\) has \(E\) in the amount\(Y\), then \(P_1\) is due \(G\) in the amount of \(X'\) and \(P_2\) isdue \(G\) in the amount of \(Y'\), so that the ratio \(X/Y = X'/Y'\)is valid. (For the formula to be usable, the potentially large varietyof factors involved have to be both quantifiable in principle andcommensurable, i.e., capable of synthesis into an aggregatevalue.)
On the formal level of pure conceptual explication, justice andequality are linked through these formal and proportional principles.Justice cannot be explained without these equality principles, whichthemselves only receive their normative significance in their role asprinciples of justice.
Fundamental equality means that persons are alike in importantrelevant and specified respects alone, and not that they are allgenerally the same or can be treated in the same way (Nagel 1991). Ina now commonly posed distinction, stemming from Dworkin (1977, p.227), moral equality can be understood as prescribing treatment ofpersons as equals, i.e., with equal concern and respect, and not theoften implausible principle of providing all persons with equaltreatment. Recognizing that human beings are all equally individualdoes not mean treating them uniformly in any respects other than thosein which they clearly have a moral claim to be treated alike.
Disputes arise, of course, concerning what these claims amount to andhow they should be resolved. Philosophical debates are concerned withthe kind of equal treatment normatively required when we mutuallyconsider ourselves persons with equal dignity. The principle of moralequality is too abstract and needs to be made concrete if we are toarrive at a clear moral standard. Nevertheless, no conception of justequality can be deduced from the notion of moral equality. Rather, wefind competing philosophical conceptions of equal treatment serving asinterpretations of moral equality. These need to be assessed accordingto their degree of fidelity to the deeper ideal of moral equality(Kymlicka 1990, p. 44).
The presumption of equality provides an elegant procedure forconstructing a theory of distributive justice (Gosepath 2004). One hasonly to analyze what can justify unequal treatment or unequaldistribution in different spheres. To put it briefly, the followingpostulates of equality are at present generally considered morallyrequired.
In the social sphere, equally gifted and motivated citizens must haveapproximately the same chances to obtain offices and positions,independent of their economic or social class and native endowments.This is the postulate of fair equality of social opportunity. Anyunequal outcome must nevertheless result from equality of opportunity,i.e., qualifications alone should be the determining factor, notsocial background or influences of milieu.
These factors play an essential, albeit varied, role in the followingalternative egalitarian theories of distributive justice. These offerdifferent accounts of what should be equalized in the economic sphere.Most can be understood as applications of the presumption of equality(whether they explicitly acknowledge it or not); only a few (likestrict equality, libertarianism, and sufficiency) are alternatives tothe presumption.
Simple equality, meaning everyone being furnished with thesame material level of goods and services, represents a strictposition as far as distributive justice is concerned. It is generallyrejected as untenable.
As an idea, simple equality fails because of problems thatare raised in regards to equality in general. It is useful to reviewthese problems, as they require resolution in any plausible approachto equality.
(i) We need adequate indices for the measurement of the equality ofthe goods to be distributed. Through what concepts should equality andinequality be understood? It is thus clear that equality of materialgoods can lead to unequal satisfaction. Money constitutes a typical,though inadequate, index; at the very least, equal opportunity has tobe conceived in other terms.
(iv) Moral objections: A strict and mechanical equaldistribution between all individuals does not sufficiently take intoaccount the differences among individuals and their situations. Inessence, since individuals desire different things, why shouldeveryone receive the same goods? Intuitively, for example, we canrecognize that a sick person has other claims than a healthy person,and furnishing each with the same goods would be mistaken. With simpleequality, personal freedoms are unacceptably limited and distinctiveindividual qualities insufficiently acknowledged; in this way they arein fact unequally regarded. Furthermore, persons not only have a moralright to their own needs being considered, but a right and a duty totake responsibility for their own decisions and the resultingconsequences.
Working against the identification of distributive justice with simpleequality, a basic postulate of many present-day egalitariansis as follows: human beings are themselves responsible for certaininequalities resulting from their free decisions; aside from minimumaid in emergencies, they deserve no recompense for such inequalities(but cf. relational egalatarians, discussed in Section 4).On the other hand, they are due compensation for inequalities that arenot the result of self-chosen options. For egalitarians, the world ismorally better when equality of life conditions prevail. Thisis an amorphous ideal demanding further clarification. Why is suchequality an ideal, and what precise currency of equality does itinvolve?
By the same token, most egalitarians do not advocate an equality ofoutcome, but different kinds of equality of opportunity, due to theiremphasis on a pair of morally central points: that individuals areresponsible for their decisions, and that the only things to beconsidered objects of equality are those which serve the realinterests of individuals. The opportunities to be equalized betweenpeople can be opportunities for well-being (i.e. objective welfare),or for preference satisfaction (i.e., subjective welfare), or forresources. It is not equality of objective or subjective well-being orresources themselves that should be equalized, but an equalopportunity to gain the well-being or resources one aspires to. Suchequality depends on their being a realm of options for each individualequal to the options enjoyed by all other persons, in the sense of thesame prospects for fulfillment of preferences or the possession ofresources. The opportunity must consist of possibilities one canreally take advantage of. Equal opportunity prevails when human beingseffectively enjoy equal realms of possibility.
The preceding considerations yield the following desideratum: insteadof simple equality, a more complex equality needs tobe conceptualized. That concept should resolve the problems discussedabove through a distinction of various classes of goods, a separationof spheres, and a differentiation of relevant criteria.
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