The Absurdity of Egalitarianism

Cross-posted from Law and Liberty

Egalitarians believe that inequality is unjust and justice requires a society to move steadily toward greater equality. This is the aim of proportional taxation, equal opportunity programs, and the various anti-poverty policies of a welfare state. These policies cost money. The egalitarian approach to getting it is to tax those who have more in order to benefit those who have less. The absurdity of this is that egalitarians suppose that justice requires ignoring whether people deserve what they have and whether they are responsible for what they lack. They suppose that it is just to ignore the requirements of justice.

Here is a consequence of egalitarianism. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, men’s life expectancy is on the average about seven years less than women’s. There is thus an inequality between men and women. If egalitarians really mean that it would be better if everyone enjoyed the same level of social and economic benefits, then they must find the inequality between the life expectancy of men and women unjust. Following their reasoning, it ought to be a requirement of justice to equalize the life expectancy of men and women. This can be done, for instance, by men having more and better healthcare and working shorter hours than women.

Moreover, an inequality that follows from the unequal life expectancy of men and women is that men are less likely to benefit after retirement from Social Security and Medicare. As things are, men and women are required to contribute an equal percentage of their earnings to these programs. This is clearly unjust from the egalitarian point of view: Why should men be required to subsidize the health and wealth of women? The egalitarian policy this suggests is to decrease the levy on men, or increase it on women. There is much that egalitarian policies could do to reduce the inequalities flowing from the disparate life expectancy of men and women.

Why Not Government-Sponsored Pleasure Centers?

There remains the question of how to compensate the present generation of men for the injustice of having shorter lives than women.
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full article here