{"title":"Redistribution and selfishness","authors":"Harry R Lloyd","doi":"10.1093/analys/anae001","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n One of the disadvantages of redistributive taxation is that it reduces people’s financial incentives to increase national wealth and benefit others by engaging in productive activities. It is natural to suppose that the severity of this disadvantage will be proportional to the socially prevailing level of human selfishness. Thus several advocates of redistribution (G.A. Cohen, Ha-Joon Chang among others) have argued that this disadvantage of redistribution need not be as severe as critics often suggest, because human beings need not be so selfish. My aim in this paper is to argue that, even in a society entirely composed of unselfish and impartially beneficent individuals, redistributive taxation would still discourage activities that contribute to national wealth, because differing individuals have different views about what counts as benefiting themselves and others. I also relate my discussion to G.A. Cohen’s influential ‘camping trip’ argument for socialism (from Why Not Socialism?).","PeriodicalId":47773,"journal":{"name":"ANALYSIS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ANALYSIS","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anae001","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"PHILOSOPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
One of the disadvantages of redistributive taxation is that it reduces people’s financial incentives to increase national wealth and benefit others by engaging in productive activities. It is natural to suppose that the severity of this disadvantage will be proportional to the socially prevailing level of human selfishness. Thus several advocates of redistribution (G.A. Cohen, Ha-Joon Chang among others) have argued that this disadvantage of redistribution need not be as severe as critics often suggest, because human beings need not be so selfish. My aim in this paper is to argue that, even in a society entirely composed of unselfish and impartially beneficent individuals, redistributive taxation would still discourage activities that contribute to national wealth, because differing individuals have different views about what counts as benefiting themselves and others. I also relate my discussion to G.A. Cohen’s influential ‘camping trip’ argument for socialism (from Why Not Socialism?).
期刊介绍:
Analysis is the most established and esteemed forum in which to publish short discussions of topics in philosophy. Articles published in Analysis lend themselves to the presentation of cogent but brief arguments for substantive conclusions, and often give rise to discussions which continue over several interchanges. A wide range of topics are covered including: philosophical logic and philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and moral philosophy.