How Radical is Rawls’s Fair Equality of Opportunity?

From Justice as Fairness:

“[T]hose who have the same level of talent and ability and the same willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of success regardless of their social class of origin.”  (p.  44.)

Trump’s Tax Act and Rawls’s Difference Principle

There is no real controversy that the Republican tax act will redistribute wealth upwards. Its best friends have persuaded themselves that it will, however, benefit not only the Republican donor class, but the whole country. Most taxpayers will get some tax cut, at least in the first years. Yes, many will become medically uninsured. (That is, they will be “free to choose” between no insurance and insurance they could not begin to afford.) And the cost of health insurance will rise for everyone more than it otherwise would. Still, these and other disadvantages for the poor and middle class will, it is contended, be swamped by the tidal wave of new jobs and other benefits wrought through the economic magic of the supply side. It will not be a trickle down, but a Niagara. People, especially politician people, can persuade themselves of the darnedest things when those things coincide nicely with their self-interest. 

Let us throw all caution to the wind and make the assumption that this is not wishful fantasy, but reality. The tax cut will benefit the poorest among us. It might then seem that the act would pass muster under John Rawls’s difference principle, which permits measures that increase inequality so long as they benefit the least well off social class.  Would the tax cut in fact be just if it benefited everyone at least a little, but increased inequality substantially?

Electoral College Democracy

Some failing arguments in defense of the Electoral College, and a look at two possible steps forward without constitutional amendment. Possible, but not likely.

The Moral Underpinnings of Democracy and its Degree-Affected Variant

Motivated by some ideas that percolated around in the New Left, this essay argues that the core justification of democracy is not that it maximizes utility (which it often does pretty well) or even that it recognizes equality of citizenship (which is essential to any just political order), but instead that it is the best projection into the sphere of social decision making of the values of individual autonomy and liberty. It follows that democracy keyed to the stake that each voter has in the outcome will sometimes realize democratic values more fully than does one citizen one vote.