Political Science 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Revealed Preference, Equality Feminism
26 Feb 2016
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Document Summary
Equality is a more controversial value than justice or liberty. Some claim that equality expresses envy, promotes a culture of dependency, and overrides individual responsibility. Others claim that equality is incompatible with our commitment to individualism". Equality is a comparative concept, but comparisons are relatively unimportant. What matters is (i) sufficiency or (ii) meeting needs or (iii) concern for the least advantaged. But you can be against equality" while being for redistributive taxation". We are unequal in many ways: intelligence, social and family background, sex, race, age, religion. Almost everyone believes in equality in some sense. All citizens should be treated as equals: everyone is entitled to equal concern and respect. But there is disagreement about what counts as treating people as equals. Equality as a distributive ideal: focus on who has how much. Treatment as an equal: ensuring equal citizenship status for all. Relational equality: people should relate to each other as equals.
