Is Good Luck Unfair?

“What is Egalitarianism?” by Samuel Scheffler, in Philosophy & Public Affairs (Winter 2003), and “Equality, Luck and Hierarchy” by Ronald Dworkin, in Philosophy & Public Affairs (Spring 2003), 41 Williams St., Princeton, N.J. 08540.

“Life is unfair,” President John F. Ken­nedy once famously observed. A school of philosophers has arisen in recent decades with a (theoretical) solution: Redistribute economic resources to compensate for advantages conferred by luck, and let advantages stemming from individuals’ own choices stand. But this “luck egalitarianism,” as it’s been dubbed, misconstrues the ideal of equality, contends Scheffler, a professor of philosophy and law at the University of California, Berkeley.

According to Scheffler, “luck egalitarians” such as Ronald Dworkin, Will Kym­licka, and John Roemer deny “that a person’s natural talent, creativity, in­tel­ligence, innovative skill, or entrepreneurial ability can be the basis for legitimate inequalities.” On the other hand, earning more money than others by choosing to work more hours than they do is fine—and so, luck egalitarians argue, the extra mon­ey shouldn’t be taxed.

But the ideal of equality, as commonly understood, Scheffler says, “is opposed not to luck but to oppression, to heritable hierarchies of social status, to ideas of caste, to class privilege and the rigid stratification of classes, and to the undemocratic distribution of power.” As a moral ideal, equality asserts the equal worth of human beings; as a political ideal, the equal rights of citizens. Questions about the distribution of economic resources are important but secondary considerations.

Dworkin, a professor of philosophy and law at New York University and the author of Sovereign Virtue (2000), tries “to anchor luck-egalitarian principles in a more general ideal of equality,” Scheffler says. But his ideal “is perfectly compatible with social hierarchy.” For example, “an autocratic government might impose an economic system that treated individuals as equals in Dwor­kin’s sense, but that would not transform the society into an egalitarian political community.”

Dworkin rejects Scheffler’s characterization of his views on taxation and other subjects, as well as the “luck egalitarian” label. But he insists that political or social equality should not be regarded as “more fundamental” than economic equality: “A genuine society of equals must aim at equal stake as well as equal voice and equal status for its citizens.”