Political Science 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Thomas Piketty, Economic Inequality, Justice As Fairness
12 Feb 2019
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Document Summary
Thomas piketty, capital in the 21st century a collection of statistics that shows the huge increase in wealth inequality since the 1800s. Obama has called income equality the defining challenge of our time . Is equal distribution only instrumentally good? (i. e. not intrinsically good?) Not being poor, not being needy, not being discluded what matters, not equality. Self-respect depends on what you can do relative to other people. Exclusion from common life leads to a lack of self-respect. Self-respect requires participation in society on relatively equal terms. Economic inequality is bad for those who have less. Being economically worse off is itself harmful to your health. Economic inequality is bad for communal, fraternal, or solidaristic social relations (we"re all in this together mentality) As economic inequality grows, economically stratified communities appear: physically and socially gated. But solidarity is not as uncontroversally valuable as self-respect or health.
