Equality of outcome: An ethical imperative

ILLAGE has always tended to support a vision of equality of out-

come in society. Unfortunately, the most widely supported form of

equality is equality of opportunity. Since it has more of the quali-

ties of “freedom” than of “equality” even Margaret Thatcher revered it,

for example. Unfortunately, too many human rights these days are being

pursued on the back of equality of opportunity rather than equality of out-

come. One of the regrettable symptoms of this is that the victims of topical

forms of discrimination seem to have little empathy for, or solidarity with,

victims of other types of discrimination.

It is good to see a refocus of the equality debate on issues where out-

comes can easily be measured – on income, and wealth. Issues of equality

of opportunity cannot so easily be measured since opportunity can be

intangible. A lot of the re-orientation is down to Thomas Piketty and his

recent book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ which draws on extraor-

dinarily wide-ranging objective data and which is admirable too for

drawing attention to the inﬂuence of policy on inequality as manifest in

perverse income and wealth distribution.

Almost everyone in economics and (therefore) mainstream politics had

for years agreed that higher taxes on the rich and re-distribution to the

poor have hurt economic growth.

As Paul Krugman has noted “liberals had generally viewed this as a

trade-oﬀ worth making, arguing that it’s worth accepting some price in

the form of lower GDP to help fellow citizens in need. Conservatives, on

the other hand, have advocated trickle-down economics, insisting that

the best policy is to cut taxes on the rich, slash aid to the poor and count

on a rising tide to raise all boats”. But, because of the Great Recession and

Piketty, fashion has moved phenomenallyswiftly to a diﬀerent view, that

there isn’t actually any trade-oﬀ between equity and ineﬃciency, that

inequality has become so extreme that it’s inﬂicting economic damage so

that redistribution – taxing the rich and helping the poor – may well raise,

not lower growth rates.

The latest manifestation of this surprisingly comes from economists

at Standard & Poor’s with their beguilingly titled “How Increasing

Inequality is Dampening U.S. Economic Growth, and Possible Ways to

Change the Tide”. The fact that a reviled Ratings Agency is addressing

economic inequality suggests that a debate that has been largely conﬁned

to the academic world and left-of-centre political circles could become

practical.

Piketty analyses historical data to show that at the end of World War II

the top % in Ireland, the UK and the US, for example, collected about

% of all national income. The share collected by the wealthiest people

dropped in the subsequent decades and then rebounded from the mid-

s. At the start of the new millennium the concentration of income at

the top was back at around pre-war levels, though it dipped in the Great

Recession. In the US incomes of those in the top % have now recovered

and surpassed pre-crisis levels, though in Ireland the Gini Coeﬃcient

seems to suggest that eﬀorts over the last few years to redistribute wealth,

through taxation and welfare, have been successful, though absolute lev-

els of deprivation for the poorest are at crisis levels and shockingly, in

Budget  for example, the lowest income group lost proportionately

more income than any other group.

On the back of the data, in ways that are redolent of Karl Marx’ views

on Capital, Piketty makes the case that it is inevitable that the returns to

capital will be higher than those to labour, and that since the richest already

have more capital, they will inevitably simply continue to get richer (at

least unless a global tax on capital is imposed). Piketty, a mild man, con-

siders this a problem for economics, but eschews the ethical issues it poses.

He therefore posits a theory that is fragile: in the event equality were once

again deemed bad for the economy, presumably it might be justiﬁable to

jettison equality. As an economist, Professor Piketty’s focus is too

narrow.

Village believes equality of outcome is an ethical not an economic imper-

ative. We are all equal from birth, and equal moral agents. If we designed

a social contract with these essentials as the starting point, with a veil of

ignorance as to our actual circumstances and prospects (or a radical open-

mindedness as to how nourishing society could be), we would see that

equality of outcome is the optimal politics. Society’s goal is to recognise

that, distributing resources to reinforce that underlying equality - by pro-

moting equal outcomes.

Unfortunately the debate about equality – and its diﬀerent forms -

remains very crude, partly because those who beneﬁt from inequality

want to keep their privileges.

We need to promote structures that address overall levels of inequality

but which also focus on pre-existing diﬃculties for the very least well oﬀ.

And we need to ground the structures in ethics, rather than economics. •

VILLAGEAugust/September 

Equality of outcome:

an ethical imperative

EDITORIAL&LETTERS

Also in this section:

Ivana Bacik on women in prison 6

John Gormley on 2015 tsunami 7

Sinéad Pentony on tax cuts 8

EDITORIAL

summertime in the

Village

ofce

August/September VILLAGE

On ignoring access considered essential for integration of

the DIT with the local community

Dear Editor,

I want to draw your attention to a blatant breach of a decision made by An

Bord Pleanála regarding the new Dublin Institute of Technology Campus

at Grangegorman. (Ref: Z. ZD. ) on th May .

Pages  and  of the Board’s Direction (SZD.pdf) state:

“High quality, prominent accesses are required on the eastern and

western boundaries of the new Quarter, at Constitution Hill and

Prussia Street. These accesses are necessary to ensure that the

new Quarter integrates successfully into the existing community,

to waymark the campus, to provide permeability through the site

and to ease undue pressure on the existing circulation network in

the area. These accesses are considered essential to the successful

implementation of the planning scheme. The opening up of these

accesses prior to the occupation of the facilities by the DIT students

is a prerequisite of the planning scheme.

Reason for modiﬁcation: It is considered that the provision of a

high quality access to the SDZ lands from the west is essential to the

integration of the SDZ lands with the local community, as expressed

in the Masterplan ...”

Despite the clear direction by An Bord Pleanála, the Grangegorman

Development Agency (GDA) have informed us that they intend to have

the ﬁrst , students relocate to Grangegorman in September 

without the access routes from Broadstone or Prussia Street in place. They

have also claimed at various stages that this decision was with the consent

of Dublin City Council (DCC) and An Bord Pleanala. Although, they have

retracted the claim with respect to An Bord Pleanala subsequently.

Pirooz Daneshmandi

Grangegorman Residents Alliance

Rathdown Road

Dublin 

On the Irish Times and the Israeli lobby

Dear Editor

I would like to draw your attention to an intriguing piece of editing in the

Irish Times.

It concerns the (excellent) dispatch from their US correspondent Simon

Carswell (Thursday st July) regarding the inﬂuence of the ‘Israel Lobby’

on US Foreign Policy which included a reference to John Mearsheimer’s

and Stephen Walt’s  book ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’.

A particular point I wanted to highlight to the Irish Times was that the

book emphasises that not only does the Israeli lobby not command the

loyalty of all of the Jewish community but even more signiﬁcantly it is

critically dependent on unstinting support from the ‘Christian Right’,

along with associated neo-conservative etc. elements.

This broad-based support from conservative Christians, across the

spectrum from ‘End-Timer’ fundamentalists to more moderate Evangelical

churches is increasingly clear and was acknowledged for example in

Monteﬁore’s ‘Jerusalem the Biography’ () which demonstrates its

th century origins.

However when I went on-line to check any links from the article to the

book I discovered that not only was there no link, but that the two para-

graphs dealing with Mearsheimer that appeared in the print version had

been deleted! The printed version noted:

“America’s unshakeable bond with Israel damages US interests but

the power of the lobby weakens Obama’s ability to respond more

aggressively, said John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago politics

professor, who co-authored a  book with Stephen Walt, called

‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’: ‘Because the lobby is so

powerful, and in this system where interest groups punch above their

weight, you have a situation where any president is incapacitated

when it comes to playing hardball with Israel’, he said”.

But this was not included in the online version. The online version also

replaced the ﬁnal sub-heading “Israeli Lobby” with “Images of Casualties”

and inserted the following text below this:

“The circulating of images of civilian casualties in Gaza on social media

may in part explain the sympathies of the American youth”.

So in addition to expunging the paragraph quoting Mearsheimer on

the power of the Israeli lobby, the suggestion is added that the reason for

the less pro-Israeli sentiments of the US youth might be due to their expo-

sure to on-line images!

Having absorbed all this I ﬁgured it would most likely be a fruitless

exercise trying to get a comment on this onto the Times’ own letters

page.

I conclude by saying that my motive in writing this does not come from

any anti-Israel paranoia on my part. But I’m convinced that if there is to

be a sustainable peace in Palestine-Israel it will be essential for Israel, and

indeed those in the media who are well disposed to it, to confront its own

fundamentalist roots and colonial origins and develop a much more hum-

ble, generous and proactive approach to its dealings with the

Palestinians.

Yours faithfully

Peter Walsh

Heathervue

Greystones, Co. Wicklow

Please address letters to: editor@villagemagazine.ie. Village reserves the right to edit letters. Village oﬀers a serious

right of reply or clariﬁcation to readers.

In an article in the June/July

Village

, Gerard Cunningham wrote that

Professor John Horgan, addressing a Press Freedom Day event, said

that the role of the press ombudsman’s oﬃce was “at its heart a

cultural and scientiﬁc project, not a legal or political one.” In fact,

Professor Horgan said it was a “cultural and societal project”.

Clarication

The interview with Fergus Finlay in the June/July

Village

was

conducted by Ken Cowley not Ken Phelan. Apologies to both.

Apology