What is the philosophical argument that explains in principle why owning significant amounts of wealth when others are in poverty is considered unjust?

Question

I’m not looking for the obvious moral explanation, but the philosophical basis behind that line of thinking. Thanks!

In: 2

Answer 1

Like /u/Mkwdr, Rawl’s theory of justice comes to mind. I’m not entirely sure what distinction you’re making between a moral explanation and its philosophical basis though – or perhaps the problem is that there are multiple moral explanations which rest on different bases – for example a Christian and a Marxist probably have different arguments as to why wealth inequality is a bad thing.

Here’s another approach, a simple utilitarian one. From this perspective the aim of the economy is to maximise utility, or happiness, for people.

There’s a thing in economics called “diminishing marginal utility of wealth”. The means that the extra happiness a person gets from each extra unit of wealth goes down. In other words, if you’re a billionaire and you get an extra £1,000 it makes no difference to your life. If you’re in abject poverty and you get £1,000 it could radically change your life.

So a more equal distribution of wealth will generate more happiness. In fact, people can be happier with a more equal distribution even if the total amount of wealth is lower. (I believe this is borne out in international surveys.)

Of course, there may be other factors justifying inequality, which most philosophies would acknowledge, but in itself it’s an inefficient distribution of wealth for making people happy.