March, 2006

Coming Monday: Wiliam Easterly on Foreign Aid

Tune in Monday for the launch of the April edition of Cato Unbound: “What Can Foreign Aid Do For the World’s Poor? ”
William Easterly, Professor of Economics at New York University and former World Bank economist, will kick off the conversation with an essay based on his new book, White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s [...]

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I’m Back! Response to Schmidtz, Singer, and Hacker

by Tom G. Palmer
The Conversation
March 26th, 2006

Let me begin with a brief apology to my fellow contributors. Because I’ve been traveling through a region of the world where there is real poverty—lots of it—I had almost no chance to check the internet at all. (Combined with the fact that my hosts exploited my presence in a very welcome but [...]

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What About Global Poverty?

by Peter Singer
The Conversation
March 25th, 2006

I should probably be distressed about being unable to pen a vigorous dissent to David Schmidtz, but when he writes “Poverty Matters, But That’s Not Inequality,” I can only applaud. It’s what I’ve said myself in One World, discussing whether trade liberalization has been bad for the poor. Showing that the WTO trading [...]

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Poverty Matters, But That’s Not Inequality

by David Schmidtz
The Conversation
March 24th, 2006

1. I have personally asked Edward Wolff, in a quasi-public setting (the workshop session on his contribution to the 2002 Social Philosophy and Policy volume on differences in wealth and income), whether he had any response to the Boskin report, given that Wolff uses the very measures that Boskin repudiates. Wolff’s response was [...]

Read: Poverty Matters, But That’s Not Inequality

Inequality is on the Rise, and it Matters

by Jacob Hacker
The Conversation
March 24th, 2006

Be careful what you wish for. I started out by chiding Schmidtz for his abstraction, and now we’re on the verge of debating the technical bases of the Consumer Price Index (CPI)!
I don’t want to go there—not because I am not familiar with the debate, or don’t have things to say, but because I truly [...]

Read: Inequality is on the Rise, and it Matters

Three Points

by David Schmidtz
The Conversation
March 22nd, 2006

Three points. Just three, because insofar as it’s a debate, the negative is supposed to respond to the affirmative, and the responsibility of the affirmative, accordingly, is not to say too much. (I sometimes say too much even for academic purposes, not only for purposes of public debate.)
1. Moving up the ladder in absolute [...]

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America’s Poor and the Myth of Mobility

by Jacob Hacker
The Conversation
March 21st, 2006

David Schmidtz’s generous response to my initial posting both pained and pleased me. It pained me because Schmidtz misunderstood my opening complaint about the abstraction of his essay (which he is fair to point out is not only below the norm for academia, but also below the level of some of my own writings). My [...]

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I’m Not a Utilitarian, But I Play One on TV

by David Schmidtz
The Conversation
March 20th, 2006

Peter Singer says, “Oil would have little value if society did not provide the infrastructure that enables us to use it. Wealth does not exist without society, and the security that society provides.” I agree, and I believe in providing that security. Perhaps that leads to a point about inequality. [...]

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If Interfering With the Market Makes People Better Off, Then Interfere

by Peter Singer
The Conversation
March 18th, 2006

David Schmidtz acknowledges the obvious point that the prices of goods and services vary in accordance with their scarcity, not with how important they are to us. He admits that we may know that those who supply scarce goods and services would be willing to supply their goods and services even if the [...]

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Continuing the Conversation: Response to Comment Essays

by David Schmidtz
The Conversation
March 17th, 2006

I think I probably should be delighted with the conversation the editors have started on the topic of “when inequality matters” and for identifying me as someone who would be likely to have something to contribute on that topic. I have not been a participant or even a browser in the blogosphere. I contributed once [...]

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Down to Earth: Reply to Schmidtz

by Jacob Hacker
Reaction Essay
March 13th, 2006

In his reply to David Schmidtz’s lead essay, Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker agress that material inequality as such is not our greatest concern. “The problems arise,” Hacker argues, “when resource inequalities translate into substantial, cumulative, and self-reinforcing inequalities of political power.”

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Best of the Blogs: Bertram and Brighouse on Schmidtz

At the Crooked Timber group blog, two philosophers, Chris Bertram of the University of Bristol and Harry Brighouse of the University of Wisconsin, band together to register their disagreement with David Schmidtz’s lead essay in a sophisticated post that we have reproduced here.

Read: Best of the Blogs: Bertram and Brighouse on Schmidtz

Inequality Elsewhere

The Wall Street Journal’s Econoblog is now featuring a debate on inequality that can profitably be read alongside Cato Unbound’s discussion. Two economists, Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Russell Roberts of George Mason University, hash it out. Their illuminating exchange illustrates the complexity of the inequality debate in terms [...]

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Which Inequalities Are Ours to Arrange? A Response to Schmidtz

by Tom G. Palmer
Reaction Essay
March 10th, 2006

Picking up where David Schmidtz’s lead essay ends, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Tom Palmer argues that a common line of reasoning used to justify the authority of the state to rearrange the unequal distribution of wealth is based on a mistake. The kind of equality that matters, Palmer argues, is the “equal right of every person to excercise choice over his or her own person.” The inequalities that emerge from the voluntary interaction of persons excercising that right are not “ours” to reconfigure.

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Why Care About Equality? A Response to Schmidtz*

by Peter Singer
Reaction Essay
March 7th, 2006

“When Jeremy Bentham first suggested that the pains and pleasures of an African should count as much as the happiness of an English person,” philosopher Peter Singer writes, “this view had radical implications, for slavery was still legal in the British colonies. Today, the suggestion that the pain of a nonhuman animal might count as much as the pain of a member of our own species is still radical. That is why this sense of equality remains important.”

Read: Why Care About Equality? A Response to Schmidtz*

When Inequality Matters

by David Schmidtz
Lead Essay
March 6th, 2006

“Everyone cares about inequality. Caring about inequality, though, is not enough to make inequality matter,” writes political philosopher David Schmidtz in the lead essay of this month’s Cato Unbound. “Unless we have the right sorts of reasons to care, equality does not matter, at least not in the way justice matters. So, why care about inequality?” Drawing on his illuminating new book, Elements of Justice, Schmidtz lucidly clarifies which inequalities matter, and why, in a world where our fellow citizens are partners in a cooperative system of joint production, not competitors in a race.

Read: When Inequality Matters