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ABSTRACT
The paper offers a wide-angle view of ethics and welfare through the lens of ‘moral economy’. It examines economic activities in relation to a view of welfare as well-being, and to ethics in terms of economic justice. Rather than draw upon abstract ideal theories such as Rawlsian or Capabilities approaches, it calls for an evaluation of actually existing sources of harm and benefit in neoliberal capitalism. It argues that we need to look behind economic outcomes in terms of how much money different people have, examine their economic relations to others, and evaluate the justifications of these relations and their associated rights and practices. It distinguishes three sources of income – earned income, transfers, and unearned income, and argues that the last of these has no functional or ethical justification but has major implications for welfare. It then comments on the policy implications of the argument, including brief comments on asset-based welfare and universal basic income policies, and concludes.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributors
Andrew Sayer is Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy. He has worked on inequality and ethics in everyday life, mainly through dialogues between social science and philosophy. His most recent book is Why We Can't Afford the Rich (Policy Press, 2014).
Notes
1 In the Labour journal Progress, 21 March 2005, http://www.progressonlineorg.uk/2005/03/21/weve-got-to-carry-this-on/.
3 A similar argument is made by the Child Poverty Action Group http://www.cpag.org.uk/content/measuring-poverty.
4 However, interpretations of Rawls that emphasize the need for a property-owning democracy that equalizes the ownership of assets and human capital, and identify the problems caused by its absence, come closer to the argument of this paper (Rawls Citation2001; O’Neill and Williamson Citation2012).
5 There are many other versions of ‘moral economy’ of varying scope. For reviews of these, see Arnold (Citation2001), Booth (Citation1994), Götz (Citation2015) and Sandberg (Citation2015).
6 Care is partly a matter of provisioning, though also obviously more than that; but in any case, carers need economic support.
7 Although these forms of income are mostly paid in money they can be and sometimes are paid in kind.
8 Under neoliberalism, an increasing degree of conditionality has been attached to many transfers, usually requiring the recipients to seek training and employment, regardless of the availability of such employment.
9 It should be noted that in being based on need, transfers differ radically from private insurance, access to which is based on ability to pay and the private provider's calculation of risk.
10 Most productive investment by private firms is funded internally from reserves, rather than from borrowing.
11 Credit can in some cases encourage productive investment indirectly by increasing purchasing power and in turn encouraging expansion of productive capacity.
12 Li and Young's research on the relation between CEO pay and value creation in FTSE 350 companies found ‘a material disconnect between pay and fundamental value generation … ’ (Li and Young Citation2016).
13 Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management, World Wealth Report Citation2015, https://www.worldwealthreport.com/.
14 As Finlayson explains, the particular rules governing the CTF actually favoured better-off families, but this could have been avoided. Some advocates of asset-based welfare favoured giving people money or vouchers in order to shrink the public sector by encouraging them to spend it on privately provided services.
15 Financial Times, 17.01.14.
16 Thanks to Chris Hart for discussions of this, disagreements notwithstanding.
17 However, it might be possible to fund a significant part of the costs by taxes on unearned income and wealth.