Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of WealthRyan, John A. (John Augustine)
PhilosophyChristian
Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth
Ryan, John A. (John Augustine)
Economic history; Income distribution -- Moral and ethical aspects; Wealth -- Religious aspects
While this conception of productivity is relatively simple, and the
canon of justice based upon it is somewhat plausible, neither is
adequate. To many situations the productivity test is substantially
inapplicable. The removal from industry of the man who works alone;
for example, the independent shoemaker, blacksmith, tailor, or farmer,
would result not in a certain diminution, but in the entire
non-appearance of the product; and the removal of the capital or tools
would have precisely the same effect. According to the former method,
the labourer is to be credited with the whole product, and capital
with nothing; according to the latter method, capital produces
everything, and labour nothing. Even when several labourers are
employed in an establishment, the test is inapplicable to those who
are engaged upon indispensable tasks; for example, the engineer in the
boiler room of a small factory, and the bookkeeper in a small store.
Remove them, and you have no product at all; hence a rigid enforcement
of Professor Carver's test would award them the whole product. To be
sure, we can get some measure of the productivity of these men by
observing the effect on the product when inferior men are put in their
places; but this merely enables us to tell how much more they are
worth than other men, not their total worth. Moreover, even the
substitution test is not always practicable. The attempt to ascertain
the productivity of a workman of high technical skill by putting in
his place an utterly unskilled labourer, would not yield very
satisfactory results, either to the inquiry or to the industry. In the
majority of such cases, the difference in the resulting product would
probably far exceed the difference in the existing wage rates of the
two men, thus showing that the skilled worker is getting considerably
less than he is "economically worth."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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