The lack of demand for equality
Topic: Individualist Feminism
Source: Stumbling and Mumbling
Why do people tolerate inequality? A new paper by Karl Ove Moene and colleagues provides a new explanation: it’s because a small role for merit in income inequality causes a big drop in demand for redistribution. They showed this in some experiments. Over 1000 people were asked to observe pairs of people working on a task for ten minutes, with earnings divided between the pairs in different ways. The spectators were then invited to redistribute some or all of those earnings. When told that one worker got everything and another nothing simply because of a lottery, 68% of spectators chose to equalize earnings. However, when told that everything went to the worker who had done best, only 28% equalized earnings. This is consistent with most people being luck egalitarians; they want to eliminate inequalities that are due to luck, but accept those due to differences in merit or effort.
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Saturday 24 June 2017 - 17:20:33