ARE YOU TAKING MY FORTUNE AWAY BECAUSE OF MY CHEAP PREFERENCES

FATAUROS, CRISTIAN

Carleon - Newport

Conferencia; Ideals and Reality in Social Ethics; 2014

Universidad de Gales del Sur

That some expensive preferences should be compensated is at the heart of the debate about how principles of justice should neutralize brute luck. Even if we think that those who claim for compensation must view themselves as disadvantaged we should look for the appropriate allocation of tax burdens. Following Dworkin and Cohen?s arguments I claim that those who have less expensive consumption preferences should carry the burden. In this paper I elaborate on the causes of wealth accumulation and proceed advancing an argument from analogy to justify that those who have more wealth because of their brute inexpensive preferences should pay more wealth taxes. This argument entails some implausible conclusions though and shows why the resource egalitarian approach to taxation is flawed. It would allow taxing people whose wealth is the result of their brute inexpensive preferences implied by their moral judgements but not to tax people whose wealth is the result of decisions to postpone consumption. Before rejecting the resource egalitarian view I evaluate the asymmetric claim that it is fair that people reap the benefits of their brute luck but it is always wrong not to compensate the costs of the brute luck. In my opinion the asymmetric fails to treat people as equally responsible. So, either we should reject the compensation of expensive preferences or rather we should apply wealth taxes independently of the reasons why wealth is accumulated. Whichever conclusion you hold resource egalitarianism`s appeal is severely undermined either because of its counterintuitive conclusions or because of its restricted view about egalitarian justice.