Comments on: Democrats and Republicans agree that Justice & Fairness are about Equity, not Equality or Impartiality

By: Equity trumps Equality in arguments about taxation « YourMorals.Org Moral Psychology Blog

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:21:34 +0000

[...] have written about this before, using different data, but with renewed attention being paid to rising inequality, leading liberals [...]

By: Equity trumps Equality in arguments about taxation | A Politics & Moral Psychology Blog

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 07:46:16 +0000

[...] have written about this before, using different data, but with renewed attention being paid to rising inequality, leading liberals [...]

By: Ravi

Ravi — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:45:51 +0000

I’m biased a bit by reading Deutsch’s work in Psychology which uses equity and equality the way I do, but I agree that the terms are not very good as they get mixed up in general usage. Proportionality is a better term for equity, that I should use going forward.

By: 66Scorpio

66Scorpio — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:12:03 +0000

I found your respective definitions of equality and equity interesting because they seem to be the reverse of how those terms are used in practice, at least here in Canada. Perhaps that is due to my own right wing leanings such that “equality” means equality of opportunity whereas “equity” is equality of outcome.

I see that in policies such as employment equity and pay equity, and in Canada’s constitutional definition of “equality” that has an additional subsection that specifically allows for affirmative action programs that ameliorate disadvantage rather than recognizing contributions.

By: Ravi

Ravi — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:10:41 +0000

That last idea re: retribution makes good sense to me. One thing that made the Tea Party people most angry was the fact that investment bankers, who had caused the economic crisis, should have been allowed to go bankrupt. Thanks for your comments.

By: wreaver

wreaver — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:21:10 +0000

Regarding,
“Rather, let’s see if people are really getting what they deserve in life. Do investment bankers really deserve million dollar bonuses? I don’t think they necessarily produce much more than many, and obviously in the past few years, their collective output has been negative. So I see taxing banks to recoup losses as a matter of equity/proportionality, not equality.”

My impression is that people who self-identify as “conservatives”or “libertarian” tend to see taxation as an act of harm. (Some see it as a “necessary evil” while some see it as just “evil”.) So, this may complicate your strategy.

An alternate strategy may be to use a “us versus them” type argument. I.e., make the investment bankers seem like a “them” so the “us” doesn’t care if they are harmed or not. (I suspect this is more likely to work on self-identifying “conservatives” than self-identifying “libertarians”.)

(Perhaps there is something in the YourMorals.org database that could be used to test this hypothesis.)

Also, the retribution dimension may be useful. Perhaps try to make it seem like the investment bankers have caused harm (in the sense of the types of things self-identifying “conservatives” and “libertarians” consider harm). Thus making the taxation of the investment bankers seem like retribution.