Abstract
It is often argued that a just distribution of wealth is one in which each person’s wealth is proportional to his or her productivity. Let us call this the ‘productivity’ ideal of distributive justice. Some version of it has been held by writers with views otherwise as different as those of the arch-conservative Milton Friedman and the socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.1 In this essay I shall attempt to defend a version of the productivity ideal of distributive justice, and examine its practical implications, especially with regard to inheritance. It is usually thought that the productivity ideal of distributive justice justifies rather conservative policies, policies which, for the sake of assuring that wealth is indeed proportional to productivity, reject governmental aid to the poor or any other interference with the market. Thus support for this ideal usually comes from conservatives.2 I shall try to show, however, that conservative support for the productivity ideal of distributive justice is misplaced; that this ideal, as I shall interpret it at least, does not justify conservative policies.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ascher, M.L. (1993): “Curtailing inherited wealth”, Michigan Law Review, 89, pp. 61–151.
Brirrairr, J.A. (1978): Inheritance and the Inequality of National Wealth, Washington, DC (Brookings Institute).
Buchanan, A. (1985): Ethics, Efficiency, and the Market, Totowa, NJ (Rowman & Allanheld).
Cooper, G. (1979): A Voluntary Tax? New Perspectives on Sophisticated Estate Tax Avoidance, Washington, DC (Brookings Institute).
Duff, D.G. (1993): “Taxing inherited wealth: A philosophical proposal”, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, 6, pp. 3–62.
Fiekowsky, S. (1959): On the Economic Effects of Taxation in the United States, Cambridge, MA (Harvard University), unpublished dissertation.
Friedman, M. (1962): Capitalism and Freedom,Chicago (University of Chicago Press).
Haslett, D.W. (1987): Equal Consideration: A Theory of Moral Justification, Newark, DE (University of Delaware Press); London and Toronto (Associated University Presses).
Haslett, D.W. (1990): “What is utility?”, Economics and Philosophy, 6, pp. 65–94.
Haslett, D.W. (1994): Capitalism with Morality,Oxford (Clarendon Press).
Mccaffery, E.J. (1994): “The political liberal case against the estate tax”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 23, pp. 281–312.
Mcclelland, D.C. (1961): The Achieving Society, Princeton, NJ (Van Nostrand).
Mill, J.S. (1965): Principles of Political Economy, with Some of their Applicationsto Social Philiosophy, ed. by V. W. Bladen and J.M. Robson, Toronto (University of Toronto Press); London (Routledge and Kegan Paul) (= Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vols. II-III ).
Proudhon, P.-J. (1876): What is Property?,Princeton (Princeton University Press).
Rawls, J. (1971): A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press )
Shaw, W. and Barry, V. (Eds.) (1994): Moral Issues in Business, Belmont, CA (Wadsworth).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Haslett, D.W. (1997). Distributive Justice and Inheritance. In: Erreygers, G., Vandevelde, T. (eds) Is Inheritance Legitimate?. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03343-2_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03343-2_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-08301-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-03343-2
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive