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Why Care About Economic Inequality?

photograph of skyscrapers behind a favela

Imagine a society where everyone is economically flourishing. Beyond the basic goods required for subsistence, individuals have access to a host of luxury goods and services as well. Opportunities currently only afforded to the upper middle class or wealthy, such as world travel, home ownership, and access to cutting-edge medical care, are accessible to all within this imaginary society. Despite this, there remains radical economic inequality. The top one percent of society’s earners have exponentially more financial resources than the rest of the population. However, the only material difference that results from this inequality is the capacity to own a multitude of vacation homes instead of one, the ability to space travel instead of merely to travel around the globe, and the ability to pass down greater amounts of wealth to one’s descendants.

For the purposes of this article, the salient point is not whether such a society is an actual economic possibility, but whether the kind of economic inequality present in this society constitutes an injustice. What gives many reason to suspect something has gone morally awry in societies with massive economic disparity is the suffering of the lower classes, including the inability of many to meet basic needs. It’s at least plausible that a society where everyone can fulfill both their basic needs as well as many of their wants, can tolerate significant disparity between the economically worst off and the best off without threatening any injustice.

Thus, let’s grant for the sake of argument that economic inequality, even radical inequality, is not intrinsically unjust. This simply means that a disproportionate economic distribution amongst individuals can be just. Do we still have reason to care about large-scale inequality, even in cases where the overall economic distribution is just? This article outlines a few reasons why we might still have strong reason to avoid severe economic inequality.

One such reason concerns the psychological impacts of economic inequality. Studies have shown that as the disparity between the top 1% and the rest of the population grows, there is also an increase in negative emotional experiences across the population. Additionally, the average person’s self-reported life satisfaction tends to decline in response to growing inequality. There are, of course, immense complications when trying to draw causal inferences at this scale. For instance, one outstanding theoretical question is whether it’s actual economic inequality that generates negative psychological consequences, or rather the mere perception of inequality that does this. Despite these kinds of ambiguities in the data, there remains significant evidence suggesting severe economic inequality comes with certain psychological and emotional costs that are worth further evaluation.

Another non-justice-based reason to care about economic inequality is due to its linkage with social trust. One way of glossing the notion of social trust is to say it involves the propensity of individuals to assume basically good intentions in other people, groups, and societal institutions. Social trust is an invaluable resource for political communities, as it engenders a number of benefits, including the promotion of governmental efficiency and improvements to public health. The very notion of democratic liberalism is at least partially constructed on the possibility of social trust amongst very diverse groups of people.

There is some evidence pointing to economic inequality as a detriment to social trust. At least within the context of the United States, there is particularly strong evidence that economic inequality causes those with less education and/or those who fall within the bottom third of earners to experience less social trust. Others cast doubt on this conclusion, arguing for a merely correlative relationship between rising inequality and declining social trust. For instance, perhaps it’s not inequality itself causing the decline in social trust, but it’s the fact that stark economic inequality frequently coexists with higher levels of governmental/legal corruption. This corruption causes a drop in social trust, which we then misattribute to inequality — or so the thought goes. As with the discussion of the psychological ramifications of inequality, drawing definitive causal connections between these kinds of metrics is complex, but there is at least some compelling evidence that rampant economic inequality and social trust are at odds.

Another reason one might object to extreme levels of economic inequality is due to its potential impacts on the very long-term future. This line of objection is a bit more philosophically dense than the previous two we’ve examined, but the basic thought goes something like this: The negative impacts of economic inequality might compound with time, resulting in an increase in certain existential risks. Such risks are those severe enough to threaten the continuation of humanity, including environmental disasters, global warfare, and the misapplication of AI.

To paint a clearer picture of how inequality might increase certain existential risks, we can consider a concrete example. There is some evidence suggesting that increases in inequality cause decreases in the quality of public institutions (e.g., institutions of higher education, governmental agencies, etc.). Such institutions are plausibly highly important in preventing certain existential risks, and thus we have strong reason to care about their quality. This gives us an indirect reason to prevent radical economic inequality. If the trend towards increasing inequality continues in particular societies, it is reasonable to think the damage done to institutions will only continue to aggregate, putting us at greater existential risk.

Whether or not radical economic inequality is intrinsically unjust, it seems we have significant reasons to care about it. Importantly, there may still be countervailing reasons to tolerate stark economic disparity (considerations of economic freedom, overall economic growth, national productivity, etc.). Thus, it is imperative that policy makers weigh the full array of pros and cons when it comes to permitting widespread economic inequality.

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Davos and the Ethics of Noblesse Oblige

photograph of statue holding scepter

Every January, high in the mountains of Switzerland, the tiny resort town of Davos hosts thousands of political, business, and economic leaders for the World Economic Forum annual meeting. The overarching mission of the World Economic Forum is to promote partnerships between government and businesses, and the conference provides current events based talks and discussion forums targeted at the “haves” of the world. The founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, is known for his advocacy of stakeholder capitalism, in which industry should work for the benefit of all its stakeholders — employees, customers, shareholders, community members, and others — as opposed to just shareholders. The conference theme this year: Rebuilding Trust. (Rebuilding trust in the abstract, mind you, this was not an admission that the global elite had broken trust and now need to repair it.)

Conspiracy theories aside, the Davos conference leans more Alpine retreat with TED-talks than sinister cabal. Politico mocked this year’s offerings for exhibiting the kind of bland political discourse you’d expect to pair with a white picket fence and a two car garage.  And indeed, the talks and panels are standard fare — what’s going to happen in the Middle East, how will AI impact the economy, how can science be more transparent.

The event is many ways thoroughly modern — globalist, corporate, technocratic. And yet, its ethical spirit is an old one: noblesse oblige (literally, nobility obligates). The phrase connotes that nobility and its associated privileges is no free lunch, but comes with commensurate moral obligations, especially to the less privileged. The opening remarks appealed to notions of “stewardship” and “trusteeship,” asserting “as leaders in government, business, and society we bear a particular responsibility to rebuild trust in how we assume our own role as trustees.” The “we” here being those invited to the conference. Attendees were repeatedly encouraged to use their power wisely and to care about the greater good.

Davos grates against American anti-elitist sentiments, but vast inequality is a fact of the modern world and noblesse oblige merits due consideration. The most cynical interpretation is that it is more a PR gambit than anything else; an implicit claim that the rich should get to keep their money because they are being ethically responsible with it. A slightly less cynical interpretation, is it that it self-soothes those at the top confronted with inequality. But let us accept for the moment that many wealthy and powerful individuals do genuinely want to help the less privileged. What comes of this? Is this a good thing? Can we count on it in lieu of progressive taxation or redistribution?

The most compelling argument in favor of noblesse oblige is simply the unsettling alternative — nobility without obligation. If there is going to be such inequality, do we not want cultural mores which encourage benevolence and civic-mindedness among the elite as opposed to rapacious individualism? More generally, across multiple ethical perspectives it is an uncontroversial “good thing” for people to care about and help other people.

There are also practical advantages. An ethos that encourages the elite to use their resources and skills to help society, if taken seriously, has a genuine possibility of creating positive change. Societal change requires power, which, naturally enough, powerful people tend to have. The elite also often have access to skills and information that can greatly aid in problem solving. To be clear, it is not that elites are inherently better or more skilled, but rather that a life path awash in resources and opportunities advantages one in developing their skills.

The real question for the public is not whether we want our modern-day elites to be benevolent as opposed to selfish (obviously benevolent), but whether to accept noblesse oblige as an adequate response to inequality. Are we okay with present levels of inequality, if the wealthy and powerful adopt a social code of benevolence of good stewardship? What are the limitations of this?

Perhaps the most straight-forward challenge is that noblesse oblige is not meaningfully committed to political equality. It cares about general well-being, not wanting deprivation or abject poverty, but not about relative inequality. For some, it may be enough that the benefits of wealth trickle down to the poor and that everyone materially benefits even as relative social positions stratify.  Others, such as the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, argue we should seek a full-throated equality in which community members stand in social relations with each other as equals. Even if noblesse oblige genuinely encouraged those at the top to care about wealth inequality, the inherent paternalism would fail to deliver on Anderson’s understanding of equality as it would not treat the less fortunate as social equals.

A choice line from American steel baron Andrew Carnegie’s famous essay, “The Gospel of Wealth” reveals this creeping condescension even while encouraging philanthropy: “the man of wealth thus becomes the mere agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience and ability to administer, doing for them better than they could or would do for themselves.”

Similarly, while noblesse oblige often encourages the powerful to help and solve problems for the less privileged, it does so on the terms of the powerful. As Carnegie illustrates, from the perspective of the wealthy and powerful, this is a feature not a bug. Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum chairman, asserts, “we come together at the beginning of the year to analyze the state of the world, in a systemic and strategic way” — the world’s problems as defined and curated by 3000 people enjoying canapés in the Swiss Alps. The overarching concern is that the vaunted knowhow and the problem-solving power of the elite may not matter if there is not agreement as to what the problems are.

Noblesse oblige is also, phrasing aside, ultimately a social/moral norm as opposed to an enforceable legal or institutional obligation. The implicit assertion is that a more powerful enforcement mechanism is not required, as the wealthy and powerful will be responsible with their wealth and power. (And more skillful than the fumbling hands of the government or general public.) The assessment of whether this promise is enough is ultimately for society more broadly to decide. Although there is also some measure of self-interest at play. Historically, too much “noblesse” and too little “oblige” has led to aristocracy losing their wealth, and sometimes their heads.

Finally, noblesse oblige places boundaries around societal change. It does not question the position of the nobility (the rich, the wealthy, the influential, the powerful) themselves, but rather takes the current distribution of power as its starting point and asks what obligations follow. It puts out of reach — on pain of self-sacrifice — any solution to societal problems which would strip the wealthy and powerful of their wealth and power.

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The Morality of Forgiving Student Debt

photograph of graduates at commencement

In March 2020, as the pandemic began, the federal government temporarily suspended student-loan payments and the charging of interest on student debt. Two years later, the suspension continues. There are now growing calls for student debt to be canceled entirely.

Forgiving student loans is a deeply controversial topic, as a few of our own writers have discussed. The policy raises difficult economic questions (would forgiving student loans beneficially stimulate the economy, or simply contribute to the already-high inflation?), political questions (would this be a political “winner” for the Democrats going into the midterms?), and also essentially moral questions.

Do the borrowers deserve forgiveness? Would forgiving existing loans be fair to those who have already paid off theirs? Would a government bailout of student loan borrowers be just when they tend to earn more than most taxpayers?

Both sides of the student loan forgiveness debate use the language of morality and justice to defend their views. On the anti-forgiveness side, it is common to hear expressions to the effect of “I paid mine. You pay yours.” How is it fair on those who worked hard, lived frugally, and repaid their loans that their lazier or less financially responsible counterparts get their loans bailed out by the government? It seems morally wrong to reward failure when it is the result of personal irresponsibility. Those who took out loans did so freely. Perhaps they ought to deal with the consequences themselves, rather than have those consequences shifted onto the taxpayer’s back.

Whether this is a convincing argument depends largely on whether you think those taking student loans are fully informed about the relevant information before making their decisions, and whether you think they are being financially exploited by the universities they are joining. If borrowers were exploited, then it seems just to forgive their debts.

First, some background. Student loan debt has grown rapidly over the past two decades, almost fourfold from $480 billion in 2006 to $1.73 trillion in 2021. Approximately 45 million Americans have student debt, an average of $39,351.

The U.S. Department of Education claims that 10 years is the ideal length of time to pay off a student loan. But, in reality, these loans take an average of 21 years to pay off. If you graduate at 22, you can be expected to be paying off your student loan into your mid-40s. And some student loans are far worse than that. The average Professional degree at a for-profit college takes a shocking 46 years to pay off — longer than most Americans are in the workforce. Even worse, some borrowers are unable to repay their debts. The default rate for the student loans owed to for-profit colleges is 52%, and 66% for African Americans.

The personal impact of crushing student loan payments can be severe and endure for decades. Given these possible long-term negative effects, perhaps the federal government shouldn’t be giving these student loans out in the first place.

The brain takes an average of 25 years to fully mature, but the life-changing decision to take a student loan is made by those as young as 18 years old. If these loans should have never been given, then forgiving them would be rectifying past exploitation.

Debt is also not solely the moral responsibility of the borrower; the provider bears some moral responsibility too. But federal student loans are available to almost all students with no requirements beyond meeting the program’s requirements. The government spends no time nor effort assessing whether the prospective student will be capable of repaying the loan, nor if the degree will be considered an asset. Both eligibility and interest rates are the same for the top-earning degrees (e.g., Petroleum Engineering, Operations Research & Industrial Engineering), and the lowest (e.g., Medical Assisting, Mental Health, Early Childhood Education), despite their vastly different risks of default. Is it really fair to give the burden of a student loan to a future low-paid Medical Assistant, on the same terms as a future Petroleum Engineer? If not, perhaps the federal government has failed to act responsibly in giving these loans in the first place, suggesting forgiveness is the moral choice.

But why should the government opt for forgiveness?

If you get into debt you cannot repay, our society has a system for escape: bankruptcy. It is a painful solution, but an essential one used by 1.5 million Americans each year. Isn’t this the solution to the student debt crisis? The problem is that this basic financial right is tightly restricted in the case of federal student debt. While some advocate changing bankruptcy law to include student debt, until those changes are enacted we are seemingly left with only one solution for those with non-repayable student loans: forgiveness.

Despite these considerations, there is also a strong case against student debt forgiveness. Student loans are not always exploitative. Used well, they can provide access to higher education to millions of Americans who could otherwise not afford it. In a world without student loans, we would expect fewer students from poor families to go to university. Most college students take student loans, and most are able to repay. The access to higher education that these loans can provide is often immensely valuable, both economically and personally.

Of course, an education is worth far more than its financial benefits, but even if we focus narrowly on the economic benefits of university education, those with a bachelor’s degree earn an average of $2.8 million over their careers, compared to $1.6 million for those with a high school diploma. In fact, every extra level of education is correlated with another boost to lifetime earnings. So, while some student loans are lifelong financial burdens, others act as financial life-rafts, leading borrowers to better lives in the broadest sense. Student loans can be irresponsible, exploitative and morally wrong, but they can also be transformative.

If student loans are neither inherently exploitative nor inherently beneficial, how can we assess blanket policies such as forgiveness? One way is to examine the effect of the policy through the lens of distributive justice — the question of what allocation of society’s wealth and resources would be equal, fitting, or otherwise just.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley appealed to the value of distributive justice in support of student loan forgiveness, calling it ‘a racial justice issue’, ‘a gender justice issue’, and ‘an economic justice issue’, and tweeting that “Black women are … the most burdened by student debt.” The implication is that Black women are unjustly disproportionately burdened by student debt, in part due to the existing racial wealth gap, and that forgiving this debt would make the country more just. Similarly, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that “Canceling student debt is one of the most powerful ways to address racial and economic equity issues. The student loan system mirrors many of the inequalities that plague American society and widens the racial wealth gap.”

Historically, Joe Biden has been fairly skeptical of such claims. In 2021, he told The New York Times, “The idea that you go to [the University of Pennsylvania] and you’re paying a total of 70,000 bucks a year and the public should pay for that? I don’t agree.” Despite the fact that Biden disagrees with Pressley, Warren, and Schumer, he too views the issue through the lens of distributive justice. But Biden believes distributive justice would not be served by a blanket policy of forgiveness. This explains the most recent proposals to be floated by members of the Biden administration, which consider much more limited and targeted debt forgiveness, aimed at those below a certain income threshold.

Biden has a point. Those who go to university earn, on average, significantly more than their high-school diploma holding counterparts. They also are much less likely to be unemployed; college graduates’ unemployment rate is now just 2%.

So how could it really help promote equality and distributive justice to bail out the debts of the high-earning university-educated elite?

Pushing this point further, the recent calls for student debt-forgiveness are seen by some as a disproportionately wealthy, powerful, and influential segment of society seeking to massively financially benefit themselves at the taxpayer’s expense. Is it right to force blue-collar taxpayers to bail out Harvard graduates? Megan Kelly recently put it like this: “There people are going to be… elite graduates… Why should I be paying for their education? I don’t want to!”

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pushed back against these skeptical characterizations and defended the distributive-justice credentials of student loan forgiveness. She wrote that “Taking the school that someone went to college to is not really shorthand for the income of the family that they come from.” Martina Orlandi gives a similar argument here. The trouble with this argument is that when we talk about adults being wealthy, we aren’t generally talking about their parents’ wealth but their own. The first person in a family to have wealth is still wealthy, and we don’t think they should be taxed less because their parents were poor. Likewise, it is unclear why college graduates should have their debts forgiven because their parents were poorer than them.

At a recent town hall, Ocasio-Cortez provided a much stronger argument in defense of debt forgiveness as a vehicle for distributive justice, pointing out that most students from high-income families never take student loans: “if you are very wealthy, if you are a multimillionaire’s child, if you are Bill Gates’ kid, if you’re Jeff Bezos’s kid—Jeff Bezos isn’t taking out a student loan to send his kids to college.” If rich kids don’t take student loans and poor kids do, then it is clear that forgiving these loans should promote greater wealth equality.

To get a better grasp on these various conflicting claims about what distributive justice demands in relation to student loans, we need to look more closely at the statistics.

Black college students are indeed the demographic of students most likely to use federal student loans. However, Black Americans have significantly lower rates of college enrolment than White Americans. 29% of Black Americans aged 25 to 29 have undergraduate degrees, while 45% of White Americans do. Therefore, forgiving federal student debt would probably help narrow the racial wealth gap between college graduates, but it would most likely widen the racial wealth gap between Americans overall. Likewise, college students from the wealthiest families tend to take out fewer loans, while those from the poorest take out more. Forgiving student loan debt would, therefore, likely decrease wealth inequality between college graduates. But, in terms of income, the top 40% of households owe 60% of outstanding education debt and make 75% of the payments. The bottom 40% of households have only 19% of outstanding educational debt, and make only 10% of the payments. So forgiving student loans would likely increase the wealth inequality between Americans overall, even as it lowers wealth inequality between college graduates.

Intergenerational justice may provide a more convincing lens from which to defend student loan forgiveness. In 1970, the average in-state tuition for a public university was $394. In 2020 it was 25.8 times higher, at $10,560. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has risen by just 3.5 times. Instead of 5 hours of work per week paying for a year of tuition at an in-state university, it now takes 28 hours per week. The days of paying for college with a part time job are over. At the same time, employers now demand higher levels of education from their employees, putting this generation under immense pressure to take on educational debt to access the same jobs their parents worked with less education. In this context, student debt forgiveness can be seen as a way of mitigating the inequality between the generations — a way of transferring the nation’s wealth to younger Americans who have lacked the financial opportunities their parents had. Whether this is convincing or not likely depends on your view of government debt. Forgiving student debt would, effectively, nationalize the debt — add it to the total U.S. federal debt. But fiscal conservatives argue this would simply add to the burden of future taxpayers (i.e. young people and their children). If they are right, then student loan forgiveness could simply perpetuate generational injustice, rather than mitigate it.

Student loan forgiveness is a controversial topic for good reason. Student loans can be irresponsibly given and exploitative, but they can also be extremely beneficial. Forgiving them could reduce certain unjust inequalities in American society, but it could increase others. But this much is clear; the issue is not just political. It is also a debate about morality and about justice.

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The Hidden Ethics of Inflation

photograph of hands removing fiver from wallet

A danger of the modern obsession with data, facts, and figures is that it can disguise questions of ethics as questions of facts. Authors here at the Prindle Post, as well as elsewhere, have discussed the slipperiness of the slogan “follow the science.” It is easy to follow the science to belief in COVID-19 and the effectiveness of vaccination, but far harder to follow the science to what an acceptable level of risk is.

Our measures and metrics, the ways we describe the world we inhabit, involve more than taking a ruler to the structure of the universe. Science requires reflection and judgment. An awareness of the way our facts and figures are constituted opens up new space for ethical and political deliberation.

Inflation is a good case in point. The naturalization of inflation as a simple descriptive fact about the world, like bad weather, prevents a discussion of the causes of inflation and the choices behind those causes. The reporting of inflation as a single tell-all figure hinders awareness of whom it impacts most.

Inflation as simultaneously fact and decision

It is not uncommon to see inflation referenced as a cause or explanation for higher prices, in the sense that the reason prices are higher is because of inflation. For instance, in an op-ed for Newsweek, former congressman Newt Gingrich wrote, “Each day that inflation increases prices, the Democrats lose ground with ordinary Americans.” Similarly, CNBC declared, “inflation has raised the prices of many goods people want for a home revamp.” However, as economists define it, “inflation” is simply the word we use to describe any general increase in the prices of goods and services over some period of time in a country. “Inflation,” then, no more explains a price increase, than a “drunk-making power” explains the inebriating effect of alcohol. What matters is the why of inflation.

It is of course likely that businesses are partly raising prices for reasons consumers can appreciate – COVID-tangled supply lines, elevated raw materials costs, increasing production capacity or workforce, raising worker pay. However, as critics of current record profits have pointed out – such as Elizabeth Warren, economist Paul Krugman, and others – at least some inflation might be the result of large corporations leveraging pricing power due to market dominance or consolidation. Inflation is, if nothing else, a good excuse to raise prices.

But even if one grants the contentious point that corporations are actively doing this, we might still believe that it is perfectly fine for a corporation to increase profits when the consumer demand is there. These are for-profit entities after all. I am, however, not concerned with the ethics of this particular practice at present; rather, my point is that all those important debates about corporate responsibility, pricing power, and anti-trust are being obscured by our insistence on treating inflation like the weather – that is, as a force beyond human control.

Likewise, it is taken as natural that higher product costs should be passed onto consumers. Here again, there can be choice. Corporations could choose to cut executive bonuses or curtail stock buybacks (which are currently surging) rather than exclusively opt to increase prices. Yet further choices are in the background about tax levels for very high income earners and the permissibility of buybacks, which were largely illegal before 1982.

Even for the notionally bloodless topics of supply lines and logistics, choices were made by corporations about prioritizing efficiency over resilience, about offshoring and the use of cheap foreign labor, and about concentration of manufacturing in specific markets.

These choices may or may not be defensible, given one’s values and their economic framework, but it is imperative to recognize them as choices, occurring in a specific political and institutional context which facilitated them, and which could be otherwise.

Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath

All sorts of significant choices and hidden values are buried within the way inflation is measured.

Inflation is typically measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI). The index is, in their own words, “a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of consumer goods and services.” (See their  FAQ.) The “basket” of goods includes gas, clothes, groceries, healthcare, and other typical purchases.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects an enormous amount of data, from across regions and consumer income levels. Economists quibble about the details – about how perfectly it captures overall inflation – but the more foundational concern from an ethical perspective is the move from an inflation measure, to how that measure impacts a particular consumer. While national policy decisions may take the details into account, national news will typically only report the overall Consumer Price Index. However, the very act of averaging across the diverse economic landscape of the United States entails the measure is insensitive to the specifics.

This happens in at least three ways. First, price increases are uneven across the bundle of goods. Inflation of 7% does not mean that gas rose 7% and frozen concentrated orange juice rose 7%. In fact, gas prices have increased several times that, spiking even higher after the invasion of Ukraine. Second, price increases are uneven across the country. Third, even if the bundle of goods is the same, it represents a different proportion of income for different people. (Stocks and other assets are not immune to negative effects from inflation, but inflation can potentially be waited out and money moved to less sensitive assets.)

The long and the short of this is that inflation hits different people differently. The people it hits hardest include those who must spend a large proportion of their income on consumable goods like food, those with less financial flexibility to modify their habits and assets, those with primarily cash saving, and those poorly positioned to negotiate inflation adjustments to their pay. The savvy reader may notice these are circling a central descriptor – those who are already poor.

In the U.K., activist Jack Monroe is developing a Vimes Boots Index that she believes more accurately reflects inflation specifically for people with less money. It is named after a character in a Terry Pratchet novel who comments that the poor cannot choose to buy boots that cost five times as much even if they last ten times as long because the poor never have the cash on hand to buy the nicer boots in the first place; a riff on the more general idea it is expensive to be poor.

Again, this is not to dispute that there is value in reporting the Consumer Price Index. It is instead to attend to the fact that how we discuss inflation and the metrics we use are not simply “following the science,” even the dismal science; they are, either more or less knowingly, decisions that express our values.

 

The author would like to acknowledge the valuable feedback of Rashid CJ Marcano-Rivera on economic matters.

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Brian Flores, Equal Opportunity, and Affirmative Action

photograph of NFL emblem on football

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

We need to talk about Brian Flores’s lawsuit – the ex-Miami Dolphins head coach alleging racial discrimination and, once again, highlighting the lack of diversity in owners’ boxes and front offices around the league. But this isn’t a story about the NFL. It isn’t even about sports. Instead, this is a story about affirmative action; it’s a story about the relationship between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome, between fairness and equity.

The NFL has a problem (okay, the NFL has a few problems). One of the most obvious ways to see this is in representation. African Americans make up 70% of the NFL’s player base, but there is only one Black head coach working in the league today. (And there are even fewer Black owners.) While any result that fails to produce absolute statistical proportionality need not suggest nefarious intent, the degree to which these figures diverge warrants at least a raised eyebrow. It’s difficult to explain why so few Black players make the transition from the field to the front office. You’d think that at least some of the skills that made for a stand-out player might also translate to their proficiency with X’s and O’s. More generally, you’d expect that the same interest and commitment that leads so many African Americans to play the game at a professional level would produce a corresponding number of others deeply invested in coaching or managing.

Enter: the Rooney Rule. In an attempt to shake up this monochrome landscape, league officials implemented a policy requiring teams to interview at least one (now two) minority candidates for any head coaching vacancy (now coordinator positions as well). The hope was that by guaranteeing that a more diverse pool of finalists gets the opportunity to make their pitch, diversity in the coaching ranks would soon follow. It was assumed that all these candidates needed was to be given the chance to change hearts and minds in person. At long last, progress might finally be made in erasing the vast differences in the way white and non-white coaches have historically been evaluated.

The details of Flores’ lawsuit confirm that no such revolution has come to pass. Owners and general managers treat the Rooney Rule as a mere formality – another hoop that must be jumped, another box that must be ticked. The organizations identified in Flores’s suit scheduled a sit-down as formally required, but apparently couldn’t bring themselves to take him or the interview seriously. The results of their deliberations had been decided long before Flores walked into the room. These executives were playacting, but couldn’t even be bothered to try to disguise it. That said, Flores’s allegations aren’t about a failure of etiquette or good manners, they concern a league that still refuses to acknowledge even the appearance of racial bias, let alone the existence of an actual, pervasive problem. It seems the Rooney Rule may have been doomed from the start; as it turns out, the problem runs much deeper than simply putting a face with a name.

So who – if anyone – might be to blame for the NFL’s present predicament?

A not insignificant number of folks will answer: no one. Brian Flores isn’t owed a head coaching gig. These organizations are free to hire whomever they so choose. Head coaches represent a significant investment of time and resources, and it would be absurd for anyone to dictate to NFL teams who is and is not the most qualified person for the job. Jim Trotter, for example, recently recounted his interchange with an owner who suggested that anybody griping about the lack of representation in the NFL “should go buy their own team and hire who they want to hire.”

Others, meanwhile, will be inclined to point to race-conscious policies (like the Rooney Rule) as the guilty party. To these voices, it seems completely wrong-headed to pick some number out of thin air and then complain when we fail to reach that arbitrary diversity benchmark. Looking at race is precisely what got us into this mess, so surely it’s absolute folly to think that intentionally putting our thumb on the scale could get us out of it.

What’s worse, mandating that teams do their due diligence – and, more specifically, demanding that due diligence take the particular form of race-conscious interviewing practices – reduces people of color to tokens. It’s no wonder Flores reports feeling embarrassed – these folks will say – the Rooney Rule set him up, time and time again, to be treated as nothing more than a courtesy invite. Flores was required to go on performing while everyone else in the room was in on the joke. And we should expect none of that behavior to change, they’ll say, if we continue to force hiring committees to go through the motions when they’ve already made up their minds.

This, critics will tell you, is precisely the trouble with initiatives so enamored with equality of outcome – or equity – where an attempt is made to jerry-rig some result built to suit our preferred optics (say, having management roles more accurately reflect teams’ composition). We shouldn’t focus all our attention on meticulously shaping some preferred result; we can’t elevate some and demote others all according to irrelevant and impersonal considerations based in appearances. Any such effort refuses to appreciate the role of individual choice – of freedom, responsibility, and merit. (Owners don’t want to be told how they have to go about picking a winner, they know exactly what winners look like.) As long as we can maintain the right conditions – a level playing field of equal opportunity where everyone receives a fair shake – then we have no cause to wring our hands over the (mis)perception of unequal outcomes. There’s no need to invoke the dreaded language of “quotas,” there’s no cause for infringing on the people in charge’s freedom to choose. You simply call the game, deal the cards, and let the chips fall where they may.

Brian Flores’s lawsuit, however, insists that the deck is stacked against him and others like him. Indeed, Flores’s claim is that equality of opportunity does not exist. He’s alleging that he’s been passed over in the coaching carousel specifically because he is Black. Flores supports these claims with his personal experience of sham interviews and by pointing to a double standard evidenced by the accelerated rise of white coaches in comparison to their more accomplished Black counterparts. In essence, Flores argues these experiences and findings (as well as the individual accounts of some 40 other Black coaches, coordinators, and managers) all indicate racial discrimination is an all-too-real force in the NFL. Without an intentional and forceful intervention, business as usual will continue.

Given this fresh round of accusations, the NFL can’t continue to take a hands-off approach to the problem of representation; it clearly isn’t going to work itself out. Even the meager measures the league put in place to support equal opportunity are not being followed. The Rooney Rule has no teeth and seems to have resulted in no tangible gains. In the end, the policy relies on honorable intentions, personal commitments, and good-faith efforts. As Stephen Holder of The Athletic writes,

We just have to come to terms with an undeniable and inconvenient truth: You can encourage and even incentivize people to do the right thing. But what you cannot do is make them want to do the right thing.

The only way things change is if the people in power take the policy seriously, and it’s not clear that the appropriate carrots or sticks exist for encouraging teams to comply with the letter of the law – let alone embrace its spirit. Achieving the desired result demands an alternative approach. At some point outcomes have to matter.

So, where does that leave us? What have we learned? Where do we go from here? It’s difficult to know how to go about balancing two competing convictions: 1) focusing solely on equality of outcomes disrespects individuality 2) relying solely on equality of opportunity assumes an unbiased system. Or, perhaps more pointedly: 1) it’s wrong to reduce people solely to their various group identities, but 2) it’s also wrong to fail to appreciate the way people, organizations, institutions reduce people solely to their various group identities.

There is no obvious way to bridge the chasm between these two commitments. But maybe we could start by acknowledging that it isn’t hopelessly reductive to think that it might be best if, for instance, the next Supreme Court Justice wasn’t another white man; to think that no single group identity is so inherently qualified as to explain an absolute stranglehold on the positions of power and privilege; to think that for only the eighth time in 230+ years it might be best to break with tradition. Because, if the Rooney Rule has taught us anything, it’s that if you don’t ever actually commit to change, it doesn’t ever actually happen.

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Hybrid Workplaces and Epistemic Injustice

photograph of blurred motion in the office

The pandemic has, among other things, been a massive experiment in the nature of work. The percentage of people who worked from home either part- or full-time jumped massively over the past year, not by design but by necessity. We are, however, nearing a time in which people may be able to return to working conditions that existed pre-pandemic, and there have thus been a lot of questions about what work will look like going forward. Recent studies have indicated that while many people want to continue working from home at least some of the time, many also miss face-to-face interactions with coworkers, not to mention having a reason to get out of the house every once in a while. Businesses may also have financial incentives to have their employees working from home more often in the future: having already invested in the infrastructure needed to have people work from home over the past year, businesses could save money by not having to pay for the space for all their employees to work in-person at once. Instead of having everyone return to the office, many businesses are thus contemplating a “hybrid” model, with employees splitting their time between the office and home.

While a hybrid workplace may sound like the best of both worlds, some have expressed concerns with such an arrangement. Here’s a big one: those who are able to go into the office more frequently will be more visible, and thus may be presented with more opportunities for advancement than those who spend most of their working hours at home. There are many reasons why one might want or need to work from home more frequently, but one significant reason is that one has obligations to care for children or other family members. This may result in greater gender inequalities in the workplace, as women who take on childcare responsibilities will especially be at a disadvantage in comparison to single men who are able to put in a full workweek in the office.

Hybrid workplaces thus risk creating injustices, in which some employees will be unfairly disadvantaged, even if it is not the explicit intention of the employer. While these potential disadvantages have been portrayed in terms of opportunities for advancement, here I want to discuss another potential form of disadvantage which could result in injustices of a different sort, namely epistemic injustices.

Epistemic injustices are ones that affect people in terms of their capacities as knowers. For instance, if you know something but are unfairly treated as if you don’t, or are not taken as seriously as you should be, then you may be experiencing an epistemic injustice. Or, you might be prevented from gaining or sharing knowledge, not because you don’t have anything interesting to contribute, but because you’re unfairly being left out of the conversation. While anyone can experience epistemic injustice, marginalized groups that are negatively stereotyped and underrepresented in positions of power are especially prone to be treated as lacking knowledge when they possess it, and to be left out of opportunities to gain knowledge and share the knowledge they possess.

We can see, then, how hybrid workplaces may contribute to a disparity not only in terms of opportunities for advancement, but also in terms of epistemic opportunities. These are not necessarily unrelated phenomena: for instance, if those who are able to put in more hours in the office are more likely to be promoted, then they will also have more opportunities to gain and share knowledge pertinent to the workplace. There may also be more subtle ways in which those working from home can be left out of the conversation. For instance, one can still be in communication with their fellow employees from home (via virtual meetings, chats, etc.), they will miss out on the more organic interactions that occur when people are working face-to-face. It tends to be easier to just walk over to a coworker if you have a question then to schedule a Zoom call, a convenience that can result in some people being asked for their input much more frequently than others.

Of course, those working in hybrid environments do not need to have any malicious intent to contribute to epistemic injustices. Again, consider a situation in which you and a colleague are able to go back to the office on a full-time basis. You are likely to acquire a lot more information from that colleague who you are able to have quick and easy conversations with than the person working from home whose schedule you need to work around. You might not necessarily think that one of your colleagues is necessarily better than the other, but it’s just easier to talk to the person who’s right over there. What ends up happening, however, is that those who need to work from home more often are gradually going to be left out of the conversation, which will prevent them from being able to contribute in the same way as those working in the office.

These problems are not necessarily insurmountable. Writing in Wired, Sid Sijbrandij, CEO of GitLab, writes that, “Unquestionably sticking to systems and processes that made an office-based model successful will doom any remote model to fail,” and mentions a number of measures that his company has taken to attempt to help remote workers communicate with one another, including “coffee chats” and “all-remote talent shows.” While I cannot in good conscience condone remote talent shows, it is clear that if businesses are going to have concerns of epistemic justice in mind, then making sure that there are more opportunities for there to be open lines of communication, including the possibility for informal conversations with remote workers, will be crucial.

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COVID-19 and Systemic Racism

photograph of "No Justice No Peace" sign at protest

As more information about COVID-19 and its effects comes to light, it is clear that the impacts of the disease are not the same everywhere or for everyone. Some communities are hit harder than others. In many cases, COVID-19 hot spots highlight systemic problems that existed before “coronavirus” was a household word. The public action that a society takes when things get rough reflects its values, in this case, its judgments about who and what is really important. Unsurprisingly, the circumstances of marginalized groups are not sufficiently taken into account in the construction of social programs and systems. When these social programs serve as the circulatory system of a nation during a pandemic, marginalized groups are the hardest hit. One lesson that this great tragedy should teach us is that we must recognize and embrace the diversity in our communities. Respect and appreciation for our cultural differences can help us to construct preemptive, life-saving policies.

If we’re willing to collectively put forth the work, the multiple tragedies we’ve recently gone through as a nation could give rise to transformative action. The murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests to amplify the message that Black Lives Matter have cast the issue of racial justice onto center stage. The disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on communities of color can and should help people to understand what it means for racism to be systemic. One barrier to meaningful dialogue about racism is that some people think that for an action to be racist, it must be done with an explicit, hateful, discriminatory intention. Certainly, there are cases in which these conditions are met—some people are explicit, hateful racists. Systemic racism, however, has the potential to be even more pernicious and impactful. Understanding systemic racism requires us to think more holistically. We need to ask ourselves: How do we design our cities? Where do we put institutions that generate pollution and waste and why do we put them where we do? What social programs do we provide and to whom? What steps are we taking to see to it that upward mobility and human flourishing are attainable for all members of society? When answers to these questions suggest that people of color are consistently more negatively impacted by our practices, we have problems of systemic racism to fix. We find ourselves in just that situation when it comes to our response to COVID-19.

One critical component of emergency response is the transmission of information. Across the country, there have been huge challenges to information dissemination, created by a cluster of assumptions. Chief among these assumptions is the idea that everyone can speak English or is in regular contact with someone who can. For instance, meatpacking plants have been among the hardest hit institutions worldwide. As I have written in a previous article, conditions in slaughterhouses create a perfect storm for the spread of coronavirus. People work shoulder-to-shoulder doing strenuous activities that cause them to sweat and breathe heavily. Many employees at these facilities are immigrants and refugees who don’t speak English. Even if health and safety materials about COVID-19 are being created and widely disseminated, if a person can’t understand that material, they are in a poor position to help themselves or those around them. In crafting public health policy, we need to take into account the diverse nature of our communities. We need to provide information in more than one language. What’s more, we need to find ways of being proactive with these communities. We shouldn’t assume that everyone has access to television or the internet.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis made headlines last week for blaming his state’s spiking COVID-19 cases on migrant farm workers. This is a common move from the emerging coronavirus playbook—blame an outbreak on one event or group of people and imply that the spike is, therefore, somehow not real. Far from being exculpatory, increased cases among migratory farm workers is evidence of failure in governmental strategy. Florida public policy officials are aware that migrant farm workers exist in their state. However, in thinking about public health and the economy, concern for what might be happening on the margins came much too little and too late.

Racial injustice often leads to a snowball effect of harms. Consider the case of Louisiana’s infamous “Cancer Alley,” an 85-mile stretch of land along the Mississippi River that is home both to a majority black population and to roughly 150 petrochemical plants. The pollution in this area causes a range of health issues for those who live there. According to the EPA’s 2014 National Air Toxics Assessment, residents of this area are 95% more likely than most Americans to develop cancer from air pollution. These communities were already disenfranchised; pollution makes it worse. Pollution also causes pre-existing conditions, so, unsurprisingly COVID-19 has ravaged communities in Cancer Alley. At one point in April, a community in the area had the highest per capita COVID-19 death rate in the country.

The Navajo Nation has also been disproportionately affected by COVID-19—at one point it had the unfortunate distinction of having the highest per capita infection rate in the United States. The Navajo community has enacted strict lockdown and prevention measures, which have appeared to flatten the curve, at least for now. Help was slow to arrive. The CARES Act set aside 600 million to assist the Navajo Nation in its fight. To combat such an infectious disease, assistance is needed urgently. However, in order to receive the money to which they were entitled, the Navajo Nation had to sue the U.S. Treasury. By this point, people were already dead. Given the position in which the United States government stands to native people, swift assistance should have been a top priority.

When we say that Black Lives Matter and when we say that the lives of people of color matter, we take on responsibilities. We need to be reflective and active not just about our criminal justice system, but about the broad social and economic systems that give rise to inequity and injustice.

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The Remarkable Odyssey of a Solid Gold Toilet

photograph of solid gold toilet America

In the early morning hours of Saturday, September 14th, a golden toilet named America was stolen from the birthplace of Winston Churchill. Artist Maurizio Cattelan crafted the piece of art in 2016 for an exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The toilet is fully functional and was designed to resemble the other toilets in the museum. Patrons had the opportunity to use the costly commode, crafted entirely of 18-carat gold, for the purposes for which such items are typically intended. The work was installed on Thursday of last week, again, in a fully functional fashion, in Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. A 66-year-old man is in custody in connection with the incident.

America is no stranger to front-page headlines. In keeping with presidential tradition, in 2018, President Trump requested to borrow a work of art from the Guggenheim Museum for display in the White House. In particular, he asked for Van Gogh’s Landscape with Snow. That request was denied. He was offered America instead.

To point out that there are layers upon layers of irony in play in this story would be, perhaps, to state the obvious. One level of irony comes from the fact that a golden toilet that represented income inequality was forcibly torn from its palatial home. The toilet was installed in Blenheim Palace in the same way its less expensive counterparts would be. As a result, stealing it required ripping it out. This was done quickly and caused significant water and structural damage to the room.

The motivations for the caper have yet to be revealed, and it might be amusing to speculate that the perpetrator knew just how ironic his actions would be and that he did what he did for that reason. Such speculation is probably misguided—the work was probably stolen because of the worth of the gold. If this is the case, the whole thing is actually even more poetic and provides a critical insight: it is a luxury to be in the position to view a million dollars worth of gold as nothing more than high art or social commentary. The message that Cattelan was trying to convey when he created America has to do with income inequality in America, and with the inescapable features of existence that we share in common regardless of our differences in wealth, status, and power. The theft of America organically goes meta on that message. The person who stole the piece presumably didn’t think that the best use of a million dollars worth of gold was to ironically adorn the water closet of a British palace somewhere.

It might be tempting to believe that the golden toilet saga represents art at its very best. Here, the value isn’t in the beauty of the piece or in the skill of the artist. Instead, it’s in the fact that it provides a potent motivation for reflection on income inequality both locally and globally. The community of art viewers, including presidents, museum docents, and art thieves, has contributed to the art and to the content of the message—it is an evolving work that reflects back at us who we are and what we value. The question is thus posed in a unique and interesting way. Art is a compelling form of speech. We might conclude, as a result of all of this, that as a human community we ought to take a page out of a toilet thief’s playbook and deconstruct the systems of wealth, privilege, and power that make golden toilets possible.

On the other hand, while we in the west are making toilets out of gold to finally generate long overdue conversations about income inequality, children in impoverished countries are dying of preventable diseases. Communities suffer from lack of access to food, shelter, clean drinking water, and basic medical care. It may be the case that America poses questions about income equality in a way that gets people to sit up and listen, but what does it say about our priorities that this is what it takes to get us to pay attention? Why aren’t we motivated more strongly by empathy for suffering beings?

A further observation has to do with the kind of value that we place on art and the ways in which that value gets expressed. The creation of art has instrumental value and may even have intrinsic value. It may be the case that the process of engaging in creative activity has value all on its own, regardless of whether the work created is good by any objective standard, or whether the creation serves a social function for the community at large. Human beings can be the harbingers of devastating destruction, and it is good to remember sometimes that we can be powerful creative forces as well. It also seems just and fair for artists to be compensated for their work. That said, the art world itself contributes to its own system of social hierarchy. Not all creation is created equal, and maybe it shouldn’t be. One great irony of the golden toilet heist is that six million dollars of the seven million dollar valuation of the art is the work’s value as art. Only one million dollars of the valuation is located with the gold of which the piece is comprised. Our valuation of art contributes to class-based distinctions. The possession of highly-valued fine art is a status symbol. Last year, a sculpture called “Rabbit,” created in 1986 by artist Jeff Koons sold for 91.1 million, setting a record for the most expensive work sold by a living artist. The sculpture resembles a rabbit-shaped silver Mylar balloon. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of people in sub-Saharan Africa died of Malaria, while multi-million dollar rabbits sat on the tabletops of the elite.

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Felicity Huffman Sentencing: Justice and Fairness in Punishment

photograph of Felicity Huffman and William H Macy

The college admissions scandal has come into prominence once more this week with the conviction and sentencing of “Desperate Housewives” star Felicity Huffman. In attempting to get her daughter into college, she paid $15,000 to a “charity” controlled by William Singer, a now notoriously corrupt admissions consultant, to have him bribe an SAT proctor to correct her daughter’s answers before submitting the test. For committing “honest services fraud,” Huffman was fined $30,000 and sentenced to 2 weeks in prison, 1 year of probation, and 250 community service hours.

The Washington Post quoted Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School, as saying “Both those who think the conduct here shouldn’t have been prosecuted and those concerned about special treatment for the privileged are bound to be dissatisfied.” And how could they not? On the one hand, the American criminal justice system is already overfull and overworked. The jails and prisons, too, are near their capacity. Essentially, some say, we are wasting resources prosecuting a first time nonviolent offender who has confessed her guilt and shown remorse.

Indeed, this is the attitude people have toward a variety of “white collar” and “victimless” crimes. However, they are only labeled as such due to the invisibility of the consequences, not due to the consequences actually being nonexistent. Every spot taken by a rich person who arrives there unmeritocratically is potentially a spot that could have been given to someone whose life could be changed by the chance. Those people, though, do not even realize a crime has been committed against them, blaming instead their own supposed insufficiency rather than a corrupt system.

Others dismiss these sorts of crimes because they seem inevitable. If they do not illegally bribe their kids into elite colleges, some say, they will do so through legal donations. But, this is a case of whataboutism. “What about kids getting into college because their parents are donors? Isn’t that unmeritocratic too? We’re not prosecuting those people so why are we prosecuting this woman?” However, we need not choose one or the other. They can be separate discussions, considered consecutively, not simultaneously.

Perhaps those parents getting their kids in via legal donations are doing something immoral too (for discussion see A.G. Holdier’s “The Ethics of Legacy Admissions”). The fact that there are multiple problems to consider does not entail that we may only try to solve all of them or none of them. Each can be considered in its own time. Thus, let us consider the fact that, for her crime, Huffman received what amounts to not even a slap on the wrist due to her wealth. Indeed, the punishment Huffman was given by Judge Indira Talwani sheds light on the disparity of punishment between the extremely wealthy and the rest of us.

The median American’s wealth (not average because that value is skewed by billionaires), according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, is $97,300. Even among those above 75, who have accumulated wealth for the longest, that value is only $264,800. In comparison, estimates for the wealth of Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy, each fall in the range of $20-50 million. Even assuming that minimum value, a $30,000 fine only amounts to 0.15% of their wealth. For that median American, the same fine would encompass 30% of all the money they ever made.

Certainly, this is an “equal” punishment, if “equal” is taken to mean the same numerical value, regardless of place or station. However, the impact on Huffman’s life as compared to some ordinary person is drastically different. A fine of 0.15% of that ordinary person’s wealth would amount to only about $150. That is the impact Huffman feels from the fine she was given. The same goes for her prison sentence and community service requirement. Most Americans have to work for a living and need a clean record to get a job. Huffman and her husband have enough money to live the rest of their lives without acting again. A prison sentence like that and so many community service hours are just annoying for the very wealthy, not life-ruining as they can be for many people of ordinary stature.

“So what?” says the cynic, “College admissions are already corrupt and have little to do with real ability. Huffman did not do anything particularly wrong. The only difference between her and the rest of the upper class is that her bribe happened to be illegal. Donors’ kids get into prestigious universities without the requisite ability all the time. There’s no good reason to waste the government’s time prosecuting cases like these.” The cynic may very well be correct, and, in fact, the judge in the case seemed to agree, saying that the college admissions system “has cracks in it with or without what these defendants have done.”

Regardless of how bad the action was, however, a fair justice system demands that justice be proportional to the crime committed. In Huffman’s case there are two possibilities: either her actions were not of any significance, in which case she need not be prosecuted, or her actions were of significance, in which case she need be punished proportionally. What actually occurred was that Huffman was prosecuted, but given what amounts to no punishment for a minor, but significant, crime. At the very least, a fair punishment for a minor, but significant, crime is a minor, but significant, punishment. However, the nature of sentencing guidelines is such that it does not allow for fines to enact any significant punishment and the alternative, time in prison, seems excessive.

Indeed, it seems inappropriate to put a person such as Huffman behind bars for years for trying to help her daughter get into college with bribes, an action for which she has shown remorse. But, there really is no punishment besides time in prison which can create the same impact of punishment regardless of class. In the case of the crime she admitted to, “honest services fraud,” the maximum fine is $250,000, only 1.25% of her wealth. Now, that percentage of the median wealth actually seems substantial, about $1,200. However, this judgment does not account for another difference between the upper class and the rest.

When a person has millions of dollars, her living expenses are a minuscule portion of her wealth. For most others, living expenses (rent, car payment, gas, food, etc.) take up a much larger portion. In essence, most people cannot pay such a fine without sacrificing some of their basic needs. A proportionally-sized fine for the ultra-wealthy, though, has no impact on their lives. Either fines must be able to cause a proportional impact on the very rich, not simply a flat percentage, or something else valuable must be taken away. For this class of people, the only truly valuable thing they cannot get more of is time. A long prison sentence, regardless of class, has a truly significant impact on one’s life.

As Oren Nimni puts it in Current Affairs, this sort of disparity in punishment,

“fundamentally delegitimizes the entire legal system, by severing the relationship between punishments and their purpose. It makes a joke out of the ideas of both the punishment fitting the crime and equality under the law, two bedrock principles necessary for  “law” to command any respect at all.”

There is plenty of room for discussion about what sorts of crimes ought to be prosecuted, about whether crimes deserve more fines or more prison time, and about the purpose punishment is supposed to serve. However, it seems clear that, regardless of what comes of these discussions, it can be agreed that the impact of a just punishment cannot vary based on class.

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Are Rentier Economies Ethical?

A couch sits below a rental office.

This article is part two of a series on rentier capitalism. Here is part one.

The idea that ethics has something to say about economics is reaching a fever pitch of discussion amid global discontent about inequality. In my last article, I explored the meaning of economic rentiership: the private capture of unearned value. Rentier capitalism enables such capture, usually through the exploitation or contrivance of scarcity. Contemporary capitalism is rife with rent-taking institutions, among them private property of land and natural resources, market monopolies, the use of platforms, and extravagant intellectual property conventions. Here I will primarily be discussing private rentiers, though state rentiers exist.

Continue reading “Are Rentier Economies Ethical?”

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The Persistent Problem of the Fair Algorithm

photograph of a keyboard and screen displaying code

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

At first glance, it might appear that the mechanical procedures we use to accomplish such mundane tasks as loan approval, medical triage, actuarial assessment, and employment screening are innocuous. Designing algorithms to process large chunks of data and transform various individual data points into a single output offers a great power in streamlining necessary but burdensome work. Algorithms advise us about how we should read the data and how we should respond. In some cases, they even decide the matter for us.

It isn’t simply that these automated processes are more efficient than humans at performing these computations (emphasizing the relevant data points, removing statistical outliers, and weighing competing factors). Algorithms also hold the promise of removing human error from the equation. A recent study, for example, has identified a tendency for judges on parole boards to become less and less lenient in their sentencing as the day wears on. By removing extraneous elements like these from the decision-making process, an algorithm might be better positioned to deliver true justice.

Similarly, another study established the general superiority of mechanical prediction to clinical prediction in various settings from medicine to mental health to education. Humans were most notably outperformed when a one-on-one interview was conducted. These findings reinforce the position that algorithms should augment (or perhaps even replace) human decision-making, which is often plagued by prejudice and swayed by sentiment.

But despite their great promise, algorithms carry a number of concerns. Chief among these are problems of bias and transparency. Often seen as free from bias, algorithms stand as neutral arbiters, capable of combating long-standing inequalities such as the gender pay-gap or unequal sentencing for minority offenders. But automated tools can just as easily preserve and fortify existing inequalities when introduced to an already discriminatory system. Algorithms used in assigning bond amounts and sentencing underestimated the risk of white defendants while overestimating that of Black defendants. Popular image-recognition software reflects significant gender bias. Such processes mirror and thus reinforce extant social bias. The algorithm simply tracks, learns, and then reproduces the patterns that it sees.

Bias can be the result of a non-representative sample size that is too small or too homogenous. But bias can also be the consequence of the kind of data that the algorithm draws on to make its inferences. While discrimination laws are designed to restrict the use of protected categories like age, race, or sex, an algorithm might learn to use a proxy, like zip codes, that produces equally skewed outcomes.

Similarly, predictive policing — which uses algorithms to predict where a crime is likely to occur and determine how to best deploy police resources — has been criticized as “enabl[ing], or even justify[ing], a high-tech version of racial profiling.” Predictive policing creates risk profiles for individuals on the basis of age, employment history, and social affiliations, but it also creates risk profiles for locations. Feeding the algorithm information which is itself race- and class-based creates a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby continued investigation of Black citizens in urban areas leads to a disproportionate number of arrests. A related worry is that tying police patrol to areas with the highest incidence of reported crime grants less police protection to neighborhoods with large immigrant populations, as foreign-born citizens and non-US citizens are less likely to report crimes.

These concerns of discrimination and bias are further complicated by issues of transparency. The very function the algorithm was meant to serve — computing multiple variables in a way that surpasses human ability — inhibits oversight. It is the algorithm itself which determines how best to model the data and what weights to attach to which factors. The complexity of the computation as well as the use of unsupervised learning — where the algorithm processes data autonomously, as opposed to receiving labelled inputs from a designer — may mean that the human operator cannot parse the algorithm’s rationale and that it will always remain opaque. Given the impenetrable nature of the decision-mechanism, it will be difficult to determine when predictions objectionably rely on group affiliation to render verdicts and who should be accountable when they do.

Related to these concerns of oversight are questions of justification: What are we owed in terms of an explanation when we are denied bail, declined for a loan, refused admission to a university, or passed over for a job interview? How much should an algorithm’s owner need to be able to say to justify the algorithm’s decision and what do we have a right to know? One suggestion is that individuals are owed “counterfactual explanations” which highlight the relevant data points that led to the determination and offer ways in which one might change the decision. While this justification would offer recourse, it would not reveal the relative weights the algorithm places on the data nor would a justification be offered for which data points an algorithm considers relevant.

These problems concerning discrimination and transparency share a common root. At bottom, there is no mechanical procedure which would generate an objective standard of fairness. Invariably, the determination of that standard will require the deliberate assignation of different weights to competing moral values: What does it mean to treat like cases alike? To what extent should group membership determine one’s treatment? How should we balance public good and individual privacy? Public safety and discrimination? Utility and individual right?

In the end, our use of algorithms cannot sidestep the task of defining fairness. It cannot resolve these difficult questions, and is not a surrogate for public discourse and debate.

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Should Pointless Jobs Exist?

Photograph of people at a booth in front of a partially obscured sign that says "Welcome Business Advisors"

Editor’s note: This article contains use of a vulgarity.

In 1899, Thorstein Veblen published “A Theory of the Leisure Class.” Veblen was a Norwegian-American economist who coined the famous term “conspicuous consumption.” Veblen argued that the ostentatious freedom from useful occupation and its symbols, such as excess possessions and elaborate hobbies, established and organized one’s power and status within a social hierarchy. Conspicuous consumption signals social status by displaying one’s dispensation from productive labour.  

 One manifestation of such status for high-ranking persons (or organizations) is the proliferation of decorative underlings. These are “specialized servants…useful more for show than for service actually performed…[their] utility comes to consist, in great part, in their conspicuous exemption from productive labour and in the evidence which this exemption affords of their master’s wealth and power.”  

 Veblen’s unflinching analysis contrasted with optimistic predictions for social and economic progress in his time. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both Marxian and capitalist theories foresaw a reduction of labour in the future which would free up workers for self-directed, human-centred pursuits.  

 Unfortunately, these prophecies have not been fulfilled. Marx’s proposed six-hour day was never implemented by Soviet regimes. Contemporary capitalism similarly shows little sign of diminishing work hours, flatly contradicting John Maynard Keynes’ prediction that the twenty-first century would usher in a fifteen-hour work week.  

 Instead, Veblen’s anthropological observations have again become relevant. Labour has not been reduced commensurately to technological advances, in part due to an increase in service industries. David Graeber, in his recently published book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Simon and Schuster, 2018), notes that despite increasing automation of many fields, new service sectors have emerged. These include financial services, academic and health administrators, human resources and public relations professionals, managers, clerks, salespeople, members of traditional service sectors, and what Graeber calls the “subsidiary industries.” Subsidiary industries maintain service sectors by providing still more specific services, such as all-night pizza delivery or dog-washing, for example. All of these fall under the definition of what Graeber calls “bullshit jobs.”

 A bullshit job, according to Graeber, is generally indicated by the secret belief of the person who does the job that their work is unnecessary. He acknowledges that this definition can be somewhat subjective – as “there can be no objective measure of social value.”  But Graeber expands his definition. He notes that ill effects to society would be felt fairly quickly if nurses, garbage collectors, teachers, mechanics, and even fiction writers were disappeared. But, he asks, would anything change – or change for the worse – if administrators, public relations personnel, hedge fund managers, subcontractors for subcontractors, sales representatives, telemarketers, and many service industries were eliminated?  

 In making his analysis, Graeber highlights the inverse proportion between the social utility of work and its financial recompense in a move that is reminiscent of feminist economic critique (regarding the unpaid or underpaid work of women in health, education, and caring work). The most essential workers – i.e. those who do jobs without which society could not function – are generally underpaid and under-respected (with the notorious exception of doctors). In contrast, many of the “bullshit jobs” Graeber describes are well-compensated. This phenomenon could certainly be read in light of Veblen’s analysis that inessential workers are luxurious expenses designed to prop up the reputation of their employers, corporations, or clients.  

 Graeber attributes this state of affairs to a still more disturbing explanation – class division to maintain the power structure of finance capitalism:

“Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorized stratum of the universally reviled unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc.).”  

This account is reminiscent of that of philosopher Iris Young, who noted a “professional class,” i.e. those who benefit from the exploitation of the working class and yet are not a part of the capitalist class.  According to this part of the theory, bullshit jobs would function as a buffer between the capitalist and the working classes.

 While many who belong to this “bullshit job” class could be considered as privileged relative to most essential workers (always saving the exception of doctors), the existence of bullshit jobs points to a spiritual malaise that Graeber discusses in his text. “How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist?”

 While Graeber and others point to power structures as the root cause of “bullshit jobs,” like Marx, he ascribes an ideological component that justifies them culturally.  The cult of work for work’s sake is one such cultural idea, which Graeber also links to social power structures as their root cause:

“The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger. (Think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the sixties.) And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.” (Graeber, page xviii).

While Graeber’s analysis of “bullshit jobs” deserves further analysis, this lens provides a deep look at the distribution of power, labour, capital, leisure, and prestige in contemporary economies. This lens strongly indicates that nineteenth-century observations on capitalism, classism, and consumerism continue to be relevant in theorizing and strategizing solutions to contemporary inequality and to the problem of alienated labor.

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An Experiment in Inequality at the Street Food Stall

An image of a street food vendor preparing a sandwich

During February, Saartj, a New Orleans food stall serving Nigerian lunches, has been conducting a social experiment. In response to a rapidly growing wage gap between white people and people of color in New Orleans, they are offering lunches for $12 and suggesting that customers who identify as white pay $30 instead: the adjusted price that represents the disparity in income between African Americans and whites. Chef Tunde Way set up his pop-up food stall in order to stimulate discussion of the wage gap and to spread awareness of the statistics of the incomes in New Orleans. The social experiment has been collecting data, asking customers to complete surveys through February 28. Preliminary results suggest that 80 percent of white customers select to pay the $30 rate for their meals. The extra money collected is to be redistributed to minorities who frequent the stall (though not many have signed up for the money).

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Tax Reform and the Value of Economic Equality: Part Three

An image of the Capitol Hill dome with a statue in the foreground

Egalitarianism is the assumption behind the criticisms of the recent Republican tax reform legislation (“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”) that were presented in the first two parts of this series. Egalitarians of all stripes believe that all persons deserve equal moral consideration. Unequal treatment is the exception and needs justification. Egalitarians disagree on what is required by equal moral consideration. Most egalitarians would criticize the Republican tax legislation for disproportionately benefiting the rich and exacerbating economic inequality in the United States.

The argument in Part One held that economic equality was itself desirable, while the argument in Part Two held that a more economically equal society is desirable because it would promote a society where everyone was treated as equal citizens. Both arguments presume that all persons deserve equal consideration in policy decisions; they just disagree what that consideration would entail regarding the distribution to tax benefits and burdens.

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The 2018 Davos Forum: Plutocratic Gathering or Genuine Discussion?

An image of Davos, Switzerland in the winter.

Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, Narendra Modi, and many other world leaders, CEOs, celebrities, and influencers will gather this week in a beautiful ski resort in Davos, Switzerland to attend the 2018 World Economic Forum. This gathering started in 1971 as a small conference attempting to teach underperforming European companies American management techniques. Since then, the Davos Forum has established itself as the most important world gathering where the world economy is tested, evaluated, and planned.

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Tax Reform and the Value of Economic Equality: Part 2

A photo of President Trump speaking behind a podium.

Concerns for economic inequality have re-emerged with the recent tax reform legislation signed into law by the president (“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”). In the first part of this series, I considered an argument given in favor of the moral value of economic equality itself. Many prominent arguments, however, have been phrased less as in favor of economic equality and more as against the current and rising level of economic inequality in American society. While these arguments do not view economic equality per se as important, they do argue that equality of other kinds is important and that economic inequality can contribute to making us unequal in other important ways.

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Tax Reform and the Value of Economic Equality: Part 1

An image of an Occupy Wall Street protest.

Growing economic inequality in American society has been a theme in American politics for some time. Ever since the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, politicians on the left have railed against the ills of inequality, and politicians on the right have been forced to defend the economic inequality exacerbated by their preferred policies. Though the occupation of Zucotti Park eventually ended, the social movement launched economic inequality into the forefront of American political consciousness.

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Do Self-Driving Cars Reinforce Socioeconomic Inequality?

A photo of the steering wheel of a Mercedes car.

Recently, Mercedes-Benz stepped into the spotlight after making a bold statement concerning the design of their self-driving cars. The development of autonomous cars has presented a plethora of moral conundrums, one of which is the most ethical way to program cars to respond to emergencies. The dilemma, as presented in a previous article, is one of trying to determine the value of and prioritize human life. Mercedes has declared that they will “program its self-driving cars to save the people inside the car. Every time.” This declaration sheds light on a new issue: is it ethical for car companies to create technology that widens the gap between socioeconomic classes and threatens current societal values?

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The Costs of a World Without Fossil Fuel-Powered Cars

On July 4, car giant Volvo announced its plan to suspend all production of non-electric or hybrid cars by the year 2019. This means that Volvo will not produce any new diesel or gasoline-powered cars in only two years. In reaction to this announcement, France’s new cabinet released an ambitious plan to ban all diesel and petroleum-fueled car sales by 2040. Though France is not the only country to take this approach to clean energy transition, regulating the sale of petroleum-fueled cars is still very rare. France’s ecology minister stated that the new standard was “a way to fight against air pollution.” Though this move is being applauded by many environmentalists, is the French government’s regulation of petroleum fueled cars really better for the environment? And how will this new regulation influence socioeconomic inequality?

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Betsy DeVos and the Changing Face of Public Education

Betsy DeVos’ controversial nomination to the Secretary of Education position has left many folks on both sides of the aisle wondering where exactly the future of our schools lie. DeVos, a staunch believer in school choice, is hoping to fix the public school system in the United States by forcing schools to compete with each other. Critics were appalled when DeVos “called traditional public schools a ‘dead end,’” leading them to launch a hashtag on social media, #publicschoolproud, to show that public schools are still making an impact on the lives of them and their children.

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Feminism, Privilege, and Trans Inclusivity

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is known for advocating an understanding of feminist values that is inclusive and diverse. Race and gender play important roles in her largely personal works. Best-selling author of “Americanah” and “We Should All be Feminists,” she emphasizes that fundamental to feminism is that “’because you are a girl’ is never a reason for anything,” and that, “I matter. I matter equally.” Her focus in much of her writing, especially in her latest project, “Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions,” is how to raise a daughter and that feminism is a project that binds mothers and daughters (she discusses the shaming dialog with her mother surrounding her first period, for instance).

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Does the United States Steal Nurses from the Developing World?

Jamaica’s healthcare system has a critical problem: there are not enough specialist nurses in the country. Jamaica produces plenty of specialist nurses. However, nurses trained in Jamaica are leaving the country to work in places in the developed world, like the United States or the United Kingdom. According to a recent NPR article, “the exodus has forced Jamaican hospitals to reschedule some complex surgeries because of a lack of nursing staff on their wards.” James Moss-Solomon, the chairman of the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, accused richer countries like the U.S. of “poaching” nurses from Jamaica. The use of the verb “to poach” —which can mean “to take something in an unfair way”—implies a moral condemnation of the practice.

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