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
of labour is so poorly paid now is the fact that it is very plentiful,
a condition which is in turn due to the unequal division of industrial
opportunity. Were the opportunities of technical education and of
entrance to the higher crafts and professions more widely diffused,
the labourers offering themselves for the disagreeable tasks would be
scarcer and their remuneration correspondingly larger. This would be
not only more comfortable to the abstract principles of justice, but
more conducive to social efficiency.
To sum up the discussion concerning the canon of efforts and
sacrifices: Labourers have a just claim to more than living wages
whenever they put forth unusual efforts, and whenever their
occupations involve unusual sacrifices, either through costs of
preparation, exceptional hazards, or inherent disagreeableness. The
precise amount of extra compensation due under any of these heads can
be determined, as a rule, only approximately.
The next canon to be considered as a reason for more than living wages
is that of productivity. This offers little difficulty; for the
unusual product is always visible among men who are performing the
same kind of work, and the employer is always willing to give the
producer of it extra compensation. While superior productive power
which is based solely upon superior native ability has only
presumptive validity as a canon of justice, that is ethically
sufficient in our workaday world. Moreover, the canon of human welfare
demands that superior productivity receive superior rewards, so long
as these are necessary to evoke the maximum net product.
The canon of scarcity has exactly the same value as that of
productivity. Society and the employer are well advised and are
justified in giving extra compensation to scarce forms of labour when
the product is regarded as worth the corresponding price. This remains
true even when the scarcity is due to restricted opportunity of
preparation, rather than to sacrifices of any sort. In that case the
higher rewards are as fully justified as the superior remuneration of
that superior productivity which is based upon exceptional native
endowments. The amount of extra compensation which may properly be
given on account of scarcity is determined either by the degree of
sacrifice involved or by the ordinary operation of competition. When
men are scarce because they have made exceptional sacrifices of
preparation, they ought to be rewarded in full proportion to these
sacrifices. When they are scarce merely because of exceptional
opportunities, their extra compensation should not exceed the amount
that automatically comes to them through the interplay of supply and
demand.
The canon of human welfare has already received implicit application.
When due regard is given to efforts, sacrifices, productivity, and
scarcity, the demands of human welfare, both in its individual and its
social aspects, are sufficiently safeguarded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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