Having too much

Ingrid Robeyns* Utrecht University [email protected]

Version March 17, 2014 Comments are most welcome.

Note to seminar attendants at the University of Victoria on March 21: I apologise for the length of the paper. If you are primarily interested in the claim and the normative arguments, you can skip sections 1 to 4 and proceed on the assumption that a riches-line can be developed in a nonarbitrary way. Skipping these sections will reduce what you will read to almost half. Note also that the latter part has some lesser-developed sections, especially section 6. Thanks in advance for reading/attending!

Abstract This paper defends the limitarian doctrine, which entails that we all have a duty not to be rich. For many, limitarianism has an intuitive plausibility: given the world in which we live, wouldn’t it be much better if the wealth of the rich were to be spent on alleviating suffering and disadvantages, and battling the various crises that the world is facing? The question is whether limitarianism can properly be spelled out and defended. This requires a number of different things. First, since limitarianism is a riches-referring claim, we need a proper conceptualisation of ‘riches’, in order to avoid that this threshold would be set arbitrarily. Yet surprisingly enough, there is a very large literature on the conceptualisation of ‘poverty’, but almost nothing on the conceptualisation of ‘riches’. Developing a conceptualisation of riches, as well as to respond to possible objections to that conceptualisation, will therefore be my first task. I then defend limitarianism based on two different arguments: the democratic argument, and the argument of urgent unmet needs. Finally, I discuss whether limitarianism should be defended as a moral or rather as a political doctrine. I analyse and reject two important objections to limitarianism, which entail that limitarianism is violating equality of opportunities, and that limitarianism does not take incentive considerations into account.

* I am very grateful for helpful comments to the audiences at the 2012 EIPE graduate conference in Rotterdam, the 2012 Society for Applied Philosophy Conference, the 2012 OZSE annual conference, the 2013 Utrecht-Nijmegen Workshop in the History and Philosophy of Economics, the 2013 Economics Ethics Network meetings, and at seminars at the Oxford Center for the Study of Social Justice, the Technical University Eindhoven, the University of Amsterdam, the London School of Economics and the Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University. Special thanks go to Constanze Binder, Simon Caney, Chandran Kukathas, Sem De Maagt, Avishai Margalit, Roland Pierik, Gijs van Donselaar, Debra Satz, Liam Shields, Zosia Stemplowska and Laura Vallentini.

1 Having too much

Whatever else theories of distributive justice take a stance on, they always specify a metric of justice and a distributive rule.1 The metric is concerned with the good X whose distribution matters in so far as justice is concerned. Among the most influential metrics are welfare, resources, primary goods and capabilities. The distributive rule specifies how X should be distributed; prime examples are the principles of priority, sufficiency, equality of outcomes, equality of opportunity and the difference principle. This paper articulates and defends a doctrine of distributive justice that I will call limitarianism. In a nutshell, limitarianism advocates a duty not to have more resources than what is needed for a fully flourishing life. This doctrine considers riches to be the state in which one has more resources than what is needed for a fully flourishing life, and claims that if this is the case, then one is having too much, morally speaking. Limitarianism is only a partial account of distributive justice, since it is agnostic regarding what distributive justice requires for those who are not fully flourishing. It is also a deliberately non-ideal doctrine, which starts from the distribution of the possession of income and wealth as it is, rather than asking what a just distribution would be in a world with strong counterfactual properties, such as for example the absence of inherited wealth and privileges, or where we are in a state of initial property acquisition.2 A complete theory of distributive justice should make normative statements about the entire distribution of the metric. Some distributive rules, such as strict equality, do so. Other distributive rules entail normative claims about the lower-tail of the distribution, which in practice coincides with normative claims about poverty and deprivation. For example, most versions of sufficientarianism entail that justice should be concerned with making sure that no-one falls below a certain minimal threshold, which is generally taken to be

1 E. Anderson (2010), ‘Justifying the capability approach to justice’, in H. Brighouse and I. Robeyns (eds.), Measuring Justice, Cambridge University Press. p. 81. 2 In contrast, starting gate theories, such as Robert Nozick’s entitlement theory, outline just procedures against a background of just initial acquisition, and are therefore harder to apply to non-ideal circumstances, since fair initial acquisition is hardly ever possible. See. R. Nozick (1974), Anarchy, State and Utopia, New York: Basic Books.

2 equal to threshold of poverty or a minimally decent life.3 Global justice theorists have defended a variety of theories in which extreme poverty around the world is argued to be an injustice, or in which arguments are put forward that the affluent have a duty to alleviate that poverty.4 The substantial contribution of philosophers to the study of poverty and disadvantage should not be surprising, since most people hold the view that these conditions are morally bad. Given the large philosophical literature on poverty, it is surprising that so little (if any) theorizing on justice has focused on the upper-tail of the income and wealth distribution. It is all the more remarkable since for a long time normative claims related to the rights, privileges and duties of rich people have been advanced in public debate. Most countries have some political parties who claim that the rich should pay for the economic crises, rather than the poor or the middle classes. In recent years several European political Parties have proposed to introduce an increase in the highest marginal tax rate of the highest income group; similarly, the Occupy Movement in the US has claimed that the ‘one percent’ should be taxed much more heavily. Some citizens have also complained that austerity measures fall disproportionally on the poor and the middle classes rather than affecting the rich in equal measure. What all these normative claims have in common is a focus on the upper-tail of the distribution – thereby making a distinction between the middle-class and the rich.5 Philosophers should give more attention to riches-referring normative claims, and not only because they have recently taken such a prominent place in political discussions in the real world. There are also philosophical reasons why we should take riches-referring normative claims seriously. For example, when analyzing our moral duties, we may have good reasons to distinguish between duties that apply to the middle-classes versus duties for the rich. Yet such a view would require us to make a distinction between the affluent that are rich and the affluent that are not rich, and such a distinction is lacking in political philosophy.

3 Arneson, Richard (2002), "Egalitarianism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition); H. Frankfurt (1987) ‘Equality as a Moral Ideal’, Ethics, 98, pp. 21-43. 4 P. Singer (1972) “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1, pp. 229- 243; T. Pogge (2001) “Priorities of Global Justice”, Metaphilosophy, 32(2), pp. 6-24; T. Pogge (2008) World Poverty and Human Rights. Second Edition. Cambridge: Polity Press. 5 The ‘affluent’ refer to anybody who is not poor. An affluent person can be either rich or non- rich. The middle-class refers to those who are affluent but not rich.

3 My aims in this paper are twofold. First, I will offer a conceptualization of ‘riches’. This account will allow us to identify rich people, and is also needed for riches-referring claims about justice (sections 1 through 3). The conceptualisation will need to meet three criteria. First, the purpose of the conceptualisation is that it serves a function in normative claims of justice. Second, given the non-ideal character of this project, the account of it has to be operationalisable: if they have access to the relevant data, then economists and social scientists should be able to make estimates of the number of riches within a certain population, and be able to identify rich persons. Third, the conceptualisation should not be an all-things-considered account of all that matters when we consider people’s quality of life. A person can be rich but unhappy: a proper conceptualisation of riches should not lump all these factors together. Being rich is not all that matters in life – in fact, it may be something that doesn’t matter much at all. Yet for questions of distributive justice we may have good reasons to want to capture riches and only riches, while acknowledging that for some other questions this is not what we should be focussing on. After developing my conceptualisation of riches in sections 1 through 3, I analyse and respond to two objections to the account of riches (in section 4). The account of riches is needed in order to spell out and defend limitarianism, which is my second main aim in this paper. Limitarianism is the doctrine that we all have a duty not to be rich (section 5). I will defend limitarianism based on the democratic argument (section 6) and on the ‘argument of unmet urgent needs’ (section 7), discuss whether it should be considered to be a moral or rather a political doctrine (section 8) and will respond to two objections: the objection of unequal opportunities and the incentive objection (section 9).

1. Is riches an absolute or a relative notion? Since poverty and riches are the opposite tails of the same distribution, the literature on the conceptualisation of poverty provides a good starting point for thinking how to conceptualise riches.6 If we want to identify the poor, we need to define a poverty line, which is a certain cut-off point on the metric that we hold

6 Amartya Sen (1983) ‘Poor, relatively speaking’, Oxford Economic Papers (35), pp. 153-169.

4 relevant (e.g. money): everyone situated below that cut-off point qualifies as poor. To identify rich people, we need to define a riches-line, a cut-off point on the metric: everyone situated above the riches-line qualifies as rich. At first sight, then, the conceptualisation of riches is symmetrical to the conceptualisation of poverty. From the poverty literature emerge three issues that are relevant for the conceptualisation of riches: first, the issue of relative versus absolute poverty measures; second, the question of the relevant metric of comparison, and thirdly, the question about the scope of comparison. We will address the questions of the metric of comparisons later in this paper, and turn now first to the issue of relative versus absolute measures and the scope of these comparisons. A relative poverty measure defines poverty whole in terms of the distance to the average of the distribution. For example, in the European Union poverty is defined as living at or below 60% of the median income of the country in which one lives. An absolute poverty line defines poverty in terms of the resources needed for meeting some basic needs, such as adequate food, housing, and so forth. In the empirical literature, it is generally acknowledged that there is no single poverty line that is clearly superior to all other poverty lines, and that each conceptualisation of poverty is facing some challenges.7 Yet statisticians and policy makers in Europe, North America and Australia, favour relative measures in the space of income. Nevertheless, there are at least two problems with relative measures from a conceptual point of view.8 The first is that relative measures conflate ‘poverty’ with ‘the worst-off’, independent of how well-off or badly-off those worst-off are. Relative measures are thus better understood as a hybrid of a poverty measure and an inequality measure. Second, in the case of relative measures, there will always be poor people and hence a fight against poverty can never be won, even if everyone were living in an affluent utopia. The only exception is if either inequality would be completely eliminated, or else if the income distribution below the poverty-line would be completely eliminated,

7 A. Goodman, P. Johnson and S. Webb (eds., 1997) Inequality in the UK, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 231. 8 Sen, ‘Poor, relatively speaking’.

5 e.g. by introducing an unconditional basic income pitched at the level of the poverty line. The second lesson from the poverty literature relates to the scope of the poverty comparisons. Poverty measures are generally applied to geographic areas that are relatively homogenous in terms of economic development, or which form a fiscal unit. This is especially the case for relative poverty measures. Some absolute poverty measures, especially if they concern poverty in developing countries, are absolute and can be applied internationally, such as the well-known $2/day poverty line. Yet apart from extreme poverty understood as the mere prerequisites for physical survival, the consensus in poverty measurement is that poverty needs to be understood in its local context, since being poor in India equates to something different than being poor in England. One could argue that independent of context, there is an abstract idea of poverty that is shared across contexts, such as not having enough material resources in order to live a dignified life. But the concrete translation of that abstract idea will then have to specified in a context-dependent manner. How have these insights into the relative/absolute nature of poverty measures, and the scope of the comparisons, been used in measures of affluence and riches? The few existing empirical analyses of riches tend to define the rich in relative terms. In one of the few empirical studies on the rich, the British social policy scholars Karen Rowlingson and Stephen McKay define three categories of wealthy people: the ‘rich’ are the most affluent 10% on a combined measure of income and assets. The ‘richer’ are the top 1%, while the top 1,000 households are the ‘richest’ group.9 From a theoretical point of view, relative riches measures come across as arbitrarily and suffer from the same problems as relative poverty measures.10 First, if the income distribution shifts, and everyone becomes materially better off or worse off, the number of wealthy people stays the same. Suppose we endorse a relative riches measure that defines the rich as the top 10% of the income and assets distribution. Suppose now that the Swedish government

9 Rowlingson & McKay (2011) Wealth and the Wealthy, Policy Press 10 Of course, the point is taken that empirical research is often confronted with data limitations and has to make simplifications.

6 discovers a huge oil field below its territories, and decides to distribute the revenues by giving all Swedish citizens an equal entitlement to the profits of oil exploitation. If everyone’s annual disposable income goes up with 50,000 Euro’s, then the number of rich, richer and richest on a relative riches measure will stay exactly the same, and those belonging to the middle-classes who were just below the group of the rich (say, those who were on the 89th percentile before the real income increase) will still be considered to be middle-class. They were on their account almost rich, and apparently this additional 50,000 Euro disposable income doesn’t make a difference to whether they should count as rich or not. The fact that a riches measure is insensitive to changes in one’s absolute income level is strikingly implausible. Relative riches measures may be appropriate to track the income position of the top tail of the income distribution over time or compare the position of the top x% richest people in different countries, but relative riches measures are unsuited to serve as a proper answer to the question: “what entails riches?” or “who should count as rich?”. Secondly, we need to distinguish between being the person who has the best position in material terms (a comparative notion), and being rich (an absolute notion). A person can have an excellent or even the very best position in comparative terms, but could in absolute terms be in a dire situation. This is most obvious in the case of a life-and-death situation. Take a dangerous and overcrowded refugee camp in Darfur. In such a context, having access to a useful basic object like a knife or a torch is surely incredibly important and may be an unusual object to have: such a person holds a valuable asset which most other persons in the refugee camp don’t have, and hence in comparative terms this person is well-off. But possessing some valuable object that most other people around her don’t posses is not enough to make a person rich. It would be deeply counterintuitive to say that an undernourished refugee whose only possession is a knife should be considered rich. Instead, such a person may be said to be slightly less deprived or slightly better equipped in the struggle for survival. The conceptual problems of relative poverty measures are thus reflected in the relative riches measures. Yet from this it doesn’t follow that the only options left are absolute measures of poverty and wealth, such as the $2/day poverty measure, or a riches metric which would say, for example, that if your

7 disposable household income is 100.000 Euros or more, you count as rich. We have more options for riches measures left, but in order to see that we need to make a distinction between two types of relative measures, namely measures that are distribution-relative versus measures that are context-relative. Distribution-relative measures define riches or poverty as a certain distance to the average of the distribution. Context-relative or contextual measures, on the other hand make some (generally weaker) reference to the context of the measurement in the definition of the riches or poverty line, without that reference being a function of the distribution itself. Context- relativity is plausible for an account of riches, since it allows us to account for the social constructive nature of riches, and to allow for differences in our understanding of riches over time and space. For example, in Western Europe owning a new yet not luxurious car in itself doesn’t make one rich – but there surely are areas in the world where car-ownership is a prime indicator of affluence. A plausible conceptualization of riches should avoid distribution- relativity, that is, riches should not be defined as a particular share or percentage of the distribution of welfare, wellbeing, or material resources, or be defined as those living at a certain distance above the average of that distribution. Rather, we should be able to describe in absolute terms what riches entails – even if that absolute description is context-specific, -- and those people who meet the criteria that are entailed by this conceptualization will then count as rich. The choice for a context-specific absolute conceptualization of riches provides a first step in the conceptualization of riches. However, this leaves two difficult questions to be answered: first, what is the metric in which we conceptualise riches, and second, where do we draw the riches line – the cut-off point on the metric above which a person will qualify as rich, and thus, according to the limitarian doctrine, as having too much?

2. The power of material resources The intuitive and commonsense understanding of riches is the state in which one has more resources than what is needed for a fully flourishing life. Yet to develop a distributive rule, this needs to be developed and specified. More specifically,

8 we need an articulation of the relationship between resources and human flourishing. It seems rather straightforward to see that we do not want to develop a metric of subjective wellbeing for the conceptualization of riches (like happiness or preference satisfaction or self-perceived judgments of affluence). A subjective measure, such as how satisfied a person is, or how affluent a person considers herself to be, may be interesting for other purposes, but they do not reflect what affluence and riches are. A subjective measure would clash with our commonsense notion that affluence does not refer to a mental state of mind, or to happiness or satisfaction, but rather to the material possessions that people hold, or the material side of their quality of life. In addition, subjective wellbeing measures are problematic because of the pervasive issues of adaptation. Problems of adaptation not only occur in the case of disadvantaged or oppressed people adapting to their adverse circumstances, but rich people also adapt to their current level of welfare, and hence adapt their levels of satisfaction and their aspirations accordingly in an upward way. A rich person living among other rich may not feel rich at all, and a rich person living among the hyperrich may even strongly believe that she is not rich, since others around her have even more. Especially in countries with high levels of class segregation this may lead to significant distortions in people’s own assessment of their level of affluence. We should thus stay away from subjective judgments about one’s affluence- status, and rather develop an account of affluence and riches that is objective and conceptualizes the relationship between material possessions and flourishing or well-being.11 In daily language, the common metric of affluence is the material resources that people have at their disposal – both flows of material resources as well as stocks of material resources. In their empirical estimates, Rowlingson and McKay use a combination of income flows and an estimate of assets as their metric to determine who counts as rich, richer and richest. Many other popular indicators of riches also focus on the amount of money people have at their possession (e.g. we speak of ‘billionaires’) or of the luxurious material goods people have bought with this money, such as expensive cars, huge houses,

11 For arguments why metrics of justice should be objective, see Anderson, ‘Justifying the capability approach to justice’, pp.

9 designer cloths, and so forth. There does seem to be a prima facie case for conceptualize affluence and riches in terms of a metric that focuses on the material side of the quality of life – either on the means that one has at one’s disposal (income, durable consumption goods, assets), or on the material lifestyle that one can afford to have. Yet some of the arguments that have been voiced from a capability perspective on the conceptualization of poverty, may also have some force in the conceptualization of affluence. For example, if I have extensive needs due to a physical impairment or mental health problems, then the amount of money that would make a non-impaired person rich may not make me rich, since I will have to spend a fortune on my medical needs before I can contemplate spending it on frivolous luxury items. The well-known argument from the capability approach in favour on focusing on what people can do with their resources rather than on the resources itself, applies.12 However, accounting for such factors may lead us into a tricky situation when conceptualizing affluence, since we may not want to account for all interindividual differences between people. Some of these differences may be needs, such as the case of an impaired person, but some of these differences may be ‘expensive tastes’, and for which we may not want to account when deciding who is affluent and who isn’t.13 For example, a semi-paraplegic person who buys an electric wheelchair buys an expensive good which she needs in order to secure some basic functioning, namely to acquire the same mobility which non- impaired people can acquire by walking, cycling or using public transport. Yet an able-bodied person who lives in a city with excellent public transport and cycling facilities who buys a fancy scooter just for fun or because he is a bit lazy, is buying a luxury item. They are similar commodities and may be similarly priced, but from a normative point of view the second purchase should count as a luxury item, whereas for the impaired person it would be deeply counterintuitive to say

12 See Sen, ‘Poor, relatively speaking’; A. Sen (1984) ‘The standard of living’ Oxford Economic Papers; Sen (1985) Commodities and Capabilities. For empirical estimates that show that disabled people need much more resources to reach the same level of affluence, see Wiebke Kuklys (2006), Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach: Theoretical Insights and Empirical Applications, Berlin: Springer. 13 On expensive tastes, see R. Dworkin (1981) ‘What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Welfare’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 10(3), 198-246.

10 that such a purchase counts as a luxury item, since it is simply needed to secure some basis functionings. The challenge of distinguishing ‘needs’ from ‘expensive tastes’ is a general problem for the capability approach, and the theoretical prize we have to pay for endorsing the core capabilitarian insight that what matters is not what resources people have, but what those resources can do for people. Adopting these insights from the ‘equality of what’ debate, I want to propose a metric of affluence that accounts for these three insights: first, it should account for our commonsense understanding of the terms ‘rich’ and ‘affluence’ as referring the material possessions of people; second, it should incorporate the core insights from the capability approach that when we consider people’s standard of living we are not interested in resources themselves but in what those resources enable people to do and be; and third, it should account of the concerns related to the need/want distinction which have been discussed at length in theories of distributive justice. Let me call the proposed metric of affluence the power of material resources (PMR). PMR is an income metric that makes a number of modifications to our income level in order for the modified income metric to properly reflect the power we have to turn that income into material quality of life. The PMR will be constructed in such a way that it best captures the conceptualization of the material side of the quality of life, and can therefore be used as the metric of affluence.

PMR = (YG+YK+ A–EXP–T–G)*ES*CF

(1) PMR starts from the gross total income that a household has (YG), that is, we aggregate income from all sources – whether from labour, profits, entitlements (such as child benefits), transfers, or returns on financial capital or investment. In line with all empirical measurement of poverty and inequality, we assume sharing of income and assets within the household.

(2) We add to YG a monetary estimate of any income or transfer in kind (YK). For example, if an elderly person is living in a nursing home which is being paid for by her adult children, then the cost of living in a nursing home will be added to

11 the estimated income of that elderly person (and subtracted as a gift (G) to the PMR of that adult child). Similarly, if a diamond company decides to give its employees diamonds as a bonus or a Christmas present, then the market value of those diamonds should be added to that person’s income.

(3) we add an estimate of the life annuity (A) of a household’s assets. That is, we estimate what the assets of a household would be worth if she were to sell them as a life annuity, that is, to turn the asset into an annual payment for the rest of her life. These assets include not only real estate and financial savings, but also shares, stocks and company ownership.

(4) If a person needs to endure reasonable expenses in order to undertake the income-generating activities, these also need to be deducted from the gross income. For example, the net expenditures (EXP) on child care and other forms of family care, but also expenditures for commuting or the improvement of one’s human capital, should be included.14 Obviously, this notion of ‘reasonable expenses’ is vague and there will inevitable a grey area where we are unsure and/or disagree where to draw the line between reasonable and non-reasonable expenses. But the presence of a grey area should not prevent us from at least deducing those expenses where a large consensus exists that they are unavoidable or otherwise reasonable expenses needed for income-generation.

(5) Next, we deduct the taxes that a person has paid on income and the annuity (T) and also deduct any transfers of money or gifts (G) the household has made. Not all gifts can be deducted from one’s income to decide on one’s PMR, but rather only those gifts which represent a net increase in someone else’s PMR. Gifts that are spent on causes that do not affect someone’s PMR, such as political campaign contributions, or financial support of the arts and sciences, should not be taken into consideration, since these gifts give the gift-giver power to decide on which causes more or less money is spend.

14 The share of these expenditures that is already covered by one’s employer or the government shouldn’t of course be deducted, expect if they have first been added to YG.

12 (6) At this point we need to consider the capabilitarian argument that income is not what intrinsically matters, but rather that we are interested in what resources enable people to do and to be. Income is at best a proxy of what matters, in other words, it may matter for instrumental or diagnostic reasons. In addition, people are diverse and income metrics cannot sufficiently account for this diversity: people need different amounts of income to meet the same set of basic capabilities. These insights have been developed in detail in the poverty literature - both in theory and in empirical measures.15 How does this insight transpose itself to the upper tail of the distribution? If a person has personal characteristics which means that she has a lower ability to convert income into valuable functionings (or allow her to avoid negative functionings16), then that conversion factor (CF) needs to be applied to the gross income. If someone is perfectly able to turn income into a valuable functioning, then CF = 1 and no correction is needed. If a person is severely impaired or has other characteristics for which they cannot be held responsible and which lead to a need for significantly more resources than other people to reach the same level of valuable functionings, then CF<1.17 The lower the value of CF, the lower the ability of a person to turn income into valuable functionings, or – put differently- the more money that person needs to reach a certain level of valuable functioning.

(7) Finally, we apply household equivalence scales (ES) to take into account the number of members within a household. In poverty and inequality measurement, income is generally modified to account for pooling and sharing of income within

15 Influenced by the capability approach, economists have developed new poverty measures that have functionings as their metric, such as the Multidimensional Poverty Measure, which has been developed by Sabina Alkire and James Foster. S. Alkire and J. Foster (2011). ‘Counting and Multidimensional Poverty Measurement. Journal of Public Economics, 95, pp. 476-487. 16 Negative functionings are functionings with a negative value: one is better off without those functionings. Examples are being in pain, being depressed, having one’s bodily integrity violated. 17 Introducing a notion of responsibility is very important. It rules out claims by a person who choose for and/or identifies for a religion which would severely constraint her capacity to covert money into functionings. It is also needed to provide a solid response to a criminal billionaire in jail who could claim that he is not able to reach a fully flourishing life and therefore doesn’t count as rich.

13 households, and for household size and composition.18 For this purpose economists have developed so-called ‘household equivalence scales’, which is a factor allowing the rescaling of household income to what that income means for each individual living in that household. Rather than dividing a household income by the number of people living in a household, it is assumed that there is some joint consumption of goods – for example a person living alone needs a fridge, but four people sharing a household together also need only one fridge. So the normative relevance of adapting household equivalence scales is that we endorse the view that the material standard of living matters, and in order to reach the same material standard of living, two single persons living on their own need more money than a couple who is living together.19 Applying equivalence scales to define PMR implies that we are assuming that household income and the revenue from assets are shared within the household.20 The reason why we apply household equivalence scales to our income measure, is that we want to be able to compare households of different sizes and compositions. Yet using household equivalent scales is a normative decision, since it implies that for the purpose of deciding whether someone counts as rich, we do not conceptualize having children as equivalent to a consumer choice,21 or as an expensive taste.22 When deciding whether a certain household income makes the members of that household rich or not, each human being should be taken into account. Suppose a single person earns £ 120,000 on her own, and doesn’t need to provide for anyone else. Suppose our

18 This is the ‘modified OECD equivalence scale’ which is well-known among welfare economists and scholars working with income statistics. 19 For example, the household equivalence scales used by EUROSTAT (the statistical agency of the European Union) are 1.0 for the first adult in a household, 0,4 for any additional household member 14 years or older, and 0,3 for each child younger than 14. If a household of two adults and two children younger than 14 earns in total 80.000 Euro, than a per capita (average) income in the household would be 80.000 divided by 4 = 20.000 Euro, whereas using the EUROSTAT equivalence scales the equivalised household income would be 80.000 divided by (1.0+0,4+0,3+0,3)= 80.000 divided by 2,0= 40,000. Using equivalence scales can thus matter a great deal. 20 This is assumption can be criticized, since we know from empirical studies that household income is not equally shared among all members. See for example F. Woolley and J. Marshall (1984) ‘Measuring inequality within the household’, The Review of Income and Wealth, 40(4), pp. 415-431. Yet the alternative assumption, to assume no sharing of income within the household, would be even more unrealistic. 21 Gary Becker (1981) A Treatise on the Family, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 22

14 riches metric and riches line is such that with this income the single person qualifies as rich. Yet how should we compare her with her colleague who also earns £ 120,000, but who is a parent providing for her family of 6 in which she is the only earner? It seems plausible to suggest that the single person is affluent, while the members of the 6-person household are decently well-off, but not rich, since they need to divide the £ 120,000 among themselves in order to secure their standard of living. Nevertheless, the way PMR deals with children is a contentious issue, as one of the objections discussed below will show.

3. The riches-line We now have a metric of affluence, namely the ‘power of material resources’. But how high should one’s PMR be in order to count as rich? Where should we put the cut-off line? We should determine the riches line by reference to a certain set of capabilities to which people should have access as a matter of a fully flourishing life. In capabilities theory, there is a common distinction between set of basic capabilities and capabilities tout-court (that is, all capabilities - which have no ceiling). Basic capabilities are those that one should have access to in order not to be deprived.23 To identify the rich, we need to proceed in a similar fashion. We need to take two steps that are both conceptual and normative: first, to identify the set of capabilities that are relevant for the standard of living, or the material side of the qualify of life, rather than for a more encompassing notion of the quality of life which also includes non-material dimensions. Second, we need to decide on the riches line, that is, the cut-off above which people count as rich. The first thing that this conceptualization requires is to establish a list of functionings which are the relevant dimensions for the standard of living. Luckily, there is by now a considerable literature on this question, albeit it comes in a number of slightly different variants. One can select the relevant capabilities based on a fundamental normative grounding, e.g. those capabilities that protect our human dignity, enable us to be equal citizens or that protect our autonomy.24

23 I. Robeyns (2011) ‘The capability approach’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 24 On the selection of capabilities for the purpose of justice, see M. Nussbaum (2006) Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality and Species Membership, Harvard University Press; E. Anderson

15 Alternatively, one can start from a discourse-theoretical or deliberative democratic point of view and endorse a procedural route. This could translate in practice into a mixture of expert consultation, deliberative analysis and social choice theoretic procedures.25 If endorse the view that the primacy for normative decisions such as the decision which capabilities are relevant for our metric of affluence and riches lies with the demos.26 Yet if we proceed along the deliberative-democratic route to developing the capability approach to affluence and riches, we need to know the scope of the deliberations. Recall that poverty is generally specified at a local or national level: one assesses the standard of living of a certain group against the standard of living of all people living in the area. Poverty and riches are contextual notions: one is poor or one is rich against the background of the context in which one lives. The same holds for the rich. If we would project ourselves 300 years back in time keeping our current material living standards fixed, we would all count as rich, whereas only few of us would regard ourselves as such. Once upon a time being able to buy spices, and hence enjoying spicy meals, was a sign of affluence, since spices were so scarce and hence expensive. Nowadays a wide range of species is available at low prices to all. To be able to enjoy a meal cooked with spices was once a privilege of the rich, but that is no longer the case. Thus, both the selection of the detailed functionings, as well as the decision where to draw the poverty line and the riches line need to be contextualized: they need to take account of the time and place where one is making evaluative judgments of poverty and affluence. Yet the list of relevant functionings would need to be limited in one important sense: it would only entail those functionings that are considered to

(1999) ‘What is the point of equality?’ Ethics, 109, 287-337; R. Claassen and M. Duwell (forthcoming) ‘The foundations of capability theory: comparing Nussbaum and Gewirth’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Early Online. 25 Sabina Alkire (2008) “Choosing dimensions: the capability approach and multidimensional poverty” in N. Kakwani & J. Silber (eds.) The Many Dimensions of Poverty, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 89-199; Robeyns (2006) ‘Selecting capabilities for quality of life measurement’, Social Indicators Research, 74, 191-215. 26 Space doesn’t allow me to defend that view here, but for an excellence defense of this way of thinking about justice, see Rainer Forst (2012), The Right to Justification. Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice, New York: Columbia University Press.

16 be part of the standard of living or the material side of the quality of life, rather than the more broader notions of quality of life or well-being. A comprehensive account of the quality of life would also include functionings that do not have a material basis, but that belong more to the political, social or spiritual dimensions of life. If we need an account of riches for purposes of developing a distributive rule, it is important that we limit our conceptualization of the quality of life to those dimensions that are directly related to one’s income level. Yet of course this doesn’t mean that the nonmaterial dimensions of the quality of life, such as one’s opportunities to be active in local politics, or the capabilities to be part of a religious community and engage in its practices, would be any less morally important. Rather, the underlying rational is that the concept of riches should not capture everything that is worthwhile, and we should try to not confuse different components of the quality of life. By keeping the material and nonmaterial dimensions of the quality of life distinct, we can allow for the possibility that a very rich person is lonely and unhappy, but also that a middle- class person feels incredibly blessed with her friends and family and with all the joy and meaning that she derives from her regular walks in the woods. The latter may feel rich, or selfdescribe as rich, but a political redistributive doctrine is therefore not warranted to count her as being rich. The process of deciding which functionings are important for the conceptualization of the riches threshold would require a careful outline of how to make that process as legitimate as possible, and how to prevent biases in that process (e.g. power imbalances among the deliberators). This raises a host of different question that are addressed in the literature on deliberate democracy and participatory techniques. Yet in order to get a first very rough attempt of what one could expect would emerge from such a process, we could look at the existing literature on the selection of functioning for the standard of living in a West-European country.27 This literature suggests that something like the following list of capabilities could possibly emerge from such a participatory process: physical health, mental health, personal security, accommodation, quality of the environment, education, training and knowledge, recreation and

27 Robeyns ‘Selecting capabilities for quality of life measurement’, and Robeyns (2005) ‘The Capability Approach in Practice’, Journal of Political Philosophy.

17 leisure and hobbies, and mobility. Each of these broad, general functionings should then be specified in more detail, by working out which more detailed and specified functionings would be entailed by each of these more general functionings. For each of these broad, general functionings, the deliberative decision- making process should then specify the riches line, by answering the question: Which levels of capabilities do we think it is reasonable for people to claim as a matter of fully flourishing yet not excessive life? The answer to this question will be dependent on the context – time and space. I conjecture that in contemporary Europe or North America, we would answer this question by stating, for example, that one must have access to the goods which enable one to be mobile within a radar of a few hundred miles: hence, either one must be able to afford a decent car, or access to public transport which enables the same functioning, but one wouldn’t need to have access to a private jet. Being able to fly to the other side of the continent on a regular basis wouldn’t fall under the capabilities of the flourishing-but-not-rich life. Once we have listed the capabilities which we should have access to as a matter of a flourishing but ‘non-rich’ life, we can calculate how much money would be needed for a ‘typical’ person (with CF = 1) to buy these goods and services. That amount gives us the riches line (RL), which is expressed in a monetary unit. For example, if our estimate is that in order to have access to these functionings of a fully flourishing but non-rich life we need 30,000 Euro a year, than the riches line is put at 30,000 Euro. Anyone whose PMR is larger than the riches line is having more resources than one needs for a fully flourishing life and therefore count as rich. This is what I will call the PMR-account of riches. Before closing this discussion of the PMR-account of riches, two notes. First, note that this account of riches doesn’t leave it to each individual person to decide whether she is rich or not. Rather I believe that such matters should be part of public debate, whereby the role of the philosopher is to put proposals on the table for that debate and provide citizens with arguments in defence of a

18 certain proposal.28 It is to be expected that compared with the PMR-account of riches, some people who do not consider themselves as rich could become identified as rich. This would not be surprising if it is true that people who are rich according to the PMR-account are not all aware of how affluent they are. Secondly, note also that making a distinction between an affluent life and the life of the rich, doesn’t mean that a non-rich person can never have access to a functioning which the deliberation process has decided to fall outside the scope of the fully flourishing life. For example, the conceptualisation would not imply that those who count as non-rich can never fly for a party to the other side of the continent: it only implies that since that falls outside the range of capabilities which we think one should have access to as a matter of a flourishing-but-non- rich life, a person wanting to fly for the weekend would need to sacrifice some resources which she could, as a matter of the flourishing life, have spent on other goods and services that fall within the scope of the non-rich qualify of life.

4. Two objections to the PMR-account of riches The ecological sustainability-objection holds that the PMR-account of riches doesn’t allow us to make a distinction between qualitative features of people’s spending patterns: the account doesn’t take into account how people spend their money. Yet for ecological reasons surely it matters a great deal whether people use their PMR to attend yoga-classes or to regularly take an airplane. The PMR- account of riches doesn’t tell us anything about the ecological footprint of people. Isn’t that a relevant moral consideration when we decide who counts as rich and who doesn’t? If two people have the same PMR but one spends it in a sustainable way and the other doesn’t, surely that must be taken into account somehow? The ecological sustainability objection makes a valid normative point but ultimately fails as an objection to the conceptualization of riches. The valid point

28 Such a view on the proper role of moral and political philosophers is widely shared, despite many misgivings on the status of political philosophy. See e.g. John Rawls who wrote “in a democracy, writers in political philosophy have no more authority than any other citizen, and should claim no more. I take this to be perfectly obvious and as not needing any comment were it not that the contrary is occasionally asserted.” Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, (ed. S. Freeman), 2007, Harvard University Press, p. 2. For a more recent and more radical statement of the view that philosophers do not have privileged access to ‘the truth’ in matters of justice, but that this needs to be constructed through deliberation, see A. Sen (2009) The Idea of Justice, London: Allen Lane; see also Forst, The Right to Justification.

19 that the sustainability objection makes is that from a moral point of view it matters how people spend their money. Yet that is analytically a separate issue: we may also endorse sustainability-relative normative claims which may put additional constraints on our morally acceptable behaviour. For example, as John Broome has argued, we have a moral duty of justice to reduce our carbon footprint to zero.29 Yet this is an additional constraint on whatever distributive claim we want to defend. The limitarianism defended here is money- limitarianism; but this doctrine could be supplemented with an additional account of ‘ecological-resources-limitarianism’.30 A person can be rich or non- rich, and can violate or not violate moral duties related to ecological sustainability concerns. Having or not having too much, and damaging or not damaging the ecosystem too much, are separate issues. The second objection, the fertility-objection, is partly similar in structure to the ecological sustainability objection, but it goes deeper. This objection states that the conceptualization of riches defended in this paper provides positive fertility-incentives since those who have more kids can acquire much more income and assets before they count as rich.31 One version of the fertility objection sees positive fertility-incentives as a bad thing, given worries about overpopulation and the net ecological burden that each additional life represents. Yet this version of the fertility objection can be rebutted in the same way as the ecological sustainability objection: surely there may be quantitative moral limits to our procreative behaviour, but this is best conceptualized as an additional constraint on any normative claim related to the upper tail of the PMR- distribution. A family with six kids may fall just below the riches-line and therefore not qualify as rich, yet we may have independent reasons why it is morally objectionable to have six children, or why the government is morally justified in implementing policies that aim at limiting the number of children we have.32 This is a separate question.

29 J. Broome (2012) Climate Matters. Ethics in a Warming World, New York: W.W. Norton. 30 See e.g. claims related to the ecological footprint, or Broome, Climate Matters. 31 I am grateful to Zofia Stemplowska and Andrew Williams for pressing these objections. 32 See e.g. S. Conly (2005) ‘The right to procreation: merits and limits’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 42(2), 105-115.

20 Yet the second version of the fertility objection may cut deeper. This objection states that in affluent societies, one needs to be quite affluent before one can afford to have children.33 If children are taken into account when calculating the per-capita PMR, we may get counter-intuitive results. Take two couples A and B who each form a family. Both families have the same PMR, and both qualify as being middle-class and hence non-rich families. While family A finds that it doesn’t quite reaches the level of affluence needed to have children and be able to provide them with a decent life, family B has four children and a net family income level which is much higher then family A’s. If the parents in family B would not have had children, the parents of family B would have qualified as rich. Yet since in the calculation of family B’s PMR a lot of expenditures for childcare are deduced and the household income is regarded as the income of six persons rather than that of two, family B doesn’t count as rich either. Isn’t it deeply counterintuitive to say that family B is non-rich, whereas the parents in that family have clearly enough material means to support four children? While the pull of that objection is clear, I think we must nevertheless resist it. The reason is that for purposes of determining our material standard of living, each person counts as a moral equal, including children. The fertility- objection regards children as the object of decision-choices of their parents, just like parents can decide to buy a dog or a car. Yet such a view violates the moral stance in which children are seen as members of our moral community who count on equal terms when we make per-capita assessments such as in the case of deciding who counts as rich. The most we can say about family B is that this family was rich before it decided to have children, or could have been rich had it decided not to have children, but no longer is rich after it had its four children. Children are not part of the material standard of living that make up our affluence – rather they are just additional human beings among which this affluence needs to be divided.34

33 The claim that raising children is costly is supported by empirical evidence. See Nancy Folbre (2008), Valuing Children. Rethinking the Economics of the Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 34 The second version of the fertility objection would also lead to deeply counter-intuitive results if we were to apply it to the case of poor people. Suppose a poor family could have managed to

21 5. Limitarianism We now have an account of riches that we need to specify limitarianism, the doctrine that we have a duty not to be rich. Such an account is needed, since otherwise limitarianism will suffer from the same ambiguity that surrounds sufficientarianism. As Paula Casal put it, “sufficientarianism maintains its plausibility by remaining vague about the critical threshold.”35 It is difficult to know whether or not limitarianism is a plausible view if we don’t know what the critical threshold is above which a person will be judged to be having too much. With the account of riches that I put on the table, I postulate that we have a fairly good sense of what that level of affluence would be, despite that the exact amount cannot be determined without a political process. Before I offer an argument in defence of limitarianism, it may be good to delve a bit deeper in the comparison with sufficientarianism.36 Perhaps limitarianism is simply a version of the sufficientarian doctrine putting the sufficiency threshold not at the level of a minimal level of well-being, but introducing a high-level sufficiency line equalling the level of full human flourishing? Yet this similarity is deceiving. Sufficientarianism states that justice requires everyone to meet a certain threshold, and is agnostic about the distributive pattern above that threshold. Limitarianism also entails a threshold, but focuses on the people situated above the threshold, claiming that they have a moral duty to move to the other side of the threshold. The limitarian distributive rule is agnostic regarding the principles of justice that apply below the threshold, and one would expect that any full theory of justice that endorses the limitarian principle would do so in combination with another distributive rule that applies to the part of the distribution below the riches-line.37

stay just above the poverty line if it had not had any children. But surely the presence of those children does not prompt us to categorize this family as non-poor. Rather, we may believe that their procreative decisions has plummet this family into poverty, or we believe that if the parents in this family had decided not to have children they could have remained non-poor. But these are clearly other claims then the claim that this poor family must be considered non-poor since the presence of the children makes the difference between poverty and non-poverty. 35 Casal, p. 316. 36 I am grateful to Roger Crisp for alerting me to this comparison. 37 On sufficientarianism, see Frankfurt, ‘Equality as a moral ideal’; R. Crisp (2003), ‘Equality, Priority and Compassion’, Ethics, 113, pp. 745-763, and P. Casal (2007), ‘Why Sufficiency is not enough’, Ethics, 119, pp. 296-326.

22 How can limitarianism be justified? There are several prima facie plausible routes to defending limitarianism. One could argue on paternalist grounds that wealth is actually a burden on rich people and their children, leading them to suffer in the nonmaterial dimensions of a flourishing life. There is some evidence for this emerging from the social sciences.38 Other empirical research has suggested that rich people are showing less altruistic and other- regarding behaviour than non-rich people, which could form the empirical premise in a communitarian or care-ethics-based argument for limitarianism.39 Virtue ethical accounts arguing against riches can be traced back a long time in history, and have been very important in, for example, the teachings of Thomas Aquinas.40 Other arguments in defence of limitarianism, which could be contractualist, or based on perfectionist notions of the good life, are equally conceivable. In this paper I remain agnostic on the plausibility of any of these defences of limitarianism. Instead, I limit my focus on two arguments for limitarianism. The first, which will be discussed in the next section, is the democratic argument for limitarianism, which focuses on the claim that riches undermines the ideal of political equality.41 Section 7 will then present and analyse another argument for limitarianism, the argument from unmet urgent needs.

6. The democratic argument for limitarianism42 The first justification for the limitarian doctrine can be found in political philosophy, where we can find a long history of arguments that great inequalities in income and wealth undermine the ideal of political equality. Rich people are able to translate their financial power into political power via a variety of

38 For empirical research suggesting that high material wealth is associated with low psychological well-being, see e.g. F.S. Pittman (1985) ‘Children of the rich’, Family Process, 24, pp. 461-472; M. Csikszentmihalyi (1999) ‘If we are so rich, why aren’t we happy?’, American Psychologist, 54, 821-827. 39 Insert refs. 40 Insert refs. 41 Dean Machin recently argued that a solution to this problem is available, if we present the we present the superrich with the choice between a 100% tax on their wealth above the level that makes them superrich, or them forfeiting some political rights. Machin (20013), ‘Political Inequality and the ‘Super-Rich’: Their Money or (some of) their Political Rights’ Res Publica, 19, pp. 121-139. 42 Note: this section has only recently been added to the paper and is not fully worked out yet.

23 mechanisms. I will only mention four mechanism here, but it is possible that there are more. First, rich people can fund political parties and individuals. Such donations generally come with the expectation that if the funder one day needs some help from the politician he or she will get it. There is the saying “Who finds me bread and cheese, it’s to his tune I dance.” Interestingly, in Dutch the saying is somewhat different, namely Wiens brood men eet, diens woord men spreekt -- “Who finds me bread, it’s his word (or his views) that I will speak.” Receiving money makes people, including politicians, indebted to the donor and likely to try to please them, do them a favour, or spread their views, or to the very least, self-sensor one’s own views. In the political arena, this undermines political equality. Second, rich people can turn financial power into political power by the funding of think thanks, which are putting out arguments supporting the views of the funders on various social, economic and political issues. Third, rich people can buy the media, which they can use to control the spread of information and the arguments that are exchanged in public debate. Media have become a hugely important power factor in contemporary democracies, yet if access to the media is a commodity that can be sold and bought to the highest bidder, than it gives rich people another mechanism to translate financial power into political power. Finally, rich people have better access to policy makers, because of their economic power. They often have direct access to politicians, whereas ordinary people cannot use their economic and financial position to gain access to decision makers. These are all mechanisms through which riches undermines the political equality of citizens. Yet the political equality of citizens is the cornerstone of free societies: and it is the most basic principle of our democratic constitutions. The constitution guarantees us political equality, but does not protect our right to be rich. Thus, we have a first argument for why we shouldn’t be rich – namely that it undermines political equality. One could object to the democratic argument for limitarianism as follows. Surely one should be able to think of other solutions to prevent financial power

24 to turn into political power than simply to force rich people to get rid of their surplus money. For example, one could try to reform the legislation on campaign funding, or the state could guarantee public radio and television to restore the balance of views and arguments in public debate. While I think that many of these measures are necessary for a healthy democracy, none of these solutions will do to restore political equality between the rich and non-rich citizens. The reason is that much of the political influence of rich people escapes the workings of formal institutions, such as legislation. Rich people could give up on their right to vote, but if they are still able to set up and fund think thanks that produce ideologically-driven research, or if they still have direct private access to government officials, then they will still have disproportionate levels of political power. Summing up, large inequalities in income, and surplus money in particular, will thus always undermine political equality, and this gives us a first reason to endorse limitarianism.

7. The argument from unmet urgent needs The second justification for the limitarian doctrine can be called the argument of unmet urgent needs. This argument is essentially consequentialist in nature, and makes the justification of limitarianism dependent upon three empirical conditions. These conditions, which we could call the circumstances of limitarianism, are the following:

(a) the condition of extreme global poverty: a world in which there are many people living in extreme poverty for which they can not be held responsible, and whose lives could be significantly improved by actions which require financial resources; (b) the condition of local or global disadvantages: a world in which many people are not flourishing and are significantly deprived in some dimensions and whose lives could be significantly improved by actions which require financial resources; (c) the condition of urgent collective action problems: a world which is faced with

25 urgent global collective action problems which could (in part) be addressed by actions which require financial resources.

The argument of unmet urgent needs is conditional upon these conditions: if none of these conditions are met, the argument no longer holds. At least one of these three conditions has to hold for this argument to be valid. Yet in the world as we know it, all three conditions are met. Firstly, the condition of extreme global poverty is clearly met. Billions of people worldwide are living in extreme poverty, and while not any solution that entails financial costs or financial redistribution is effective in eradicating poverty, many if not all of the effective poverty- reducing interventions do require financial resources.43 The second condition is also met. Even people who are not poor in material terms can be deprived or disadvantaged in many ways. All post-industrialised countries include people who are homeless or who are so poor that they cannot afford to fully take part in society; children with special educational needs do not always get the education that allows them to be adequately challenged and developed; a surprisingly large number of people are functionally illiterate; and a worryingly large number of both adults and children have mental health problems for which they are not receiving adequate help.44 The third condition is also met, since there are numerous collective action problems that require the attention of governments or other actors of change. As 20 years of Human Development Reports have documented, several major collective problems facing the world could be effectively addressed if only the government were to devote sufficient attention and resources to addressing the issues. Addressing climate change and the deterioration of the Earth’s ecosystem is arguable the most urgent problem, which could be addresses by a massive investment in green technological innovation, providing reproductive health services in areas where there are large unmet need for fertility control, large scale programmes of reforestation,

43 For a discussion of resources-dependent development interventions that do contribute to poverty-reduction, such as micro-credit schemes or India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, see . The clearest case of a development intervention that is heavily resources-dependent is an unconditional basis income, or the unconditional child benefit grants or elderly pensions in South-Africa. See . 44 See e.g. the American Human Development Report, or J. Wolff and A. de-Shalit (2007), Disadvantage, Oxford University Press.

26 and so forth. All of these require financial resources – resources that the rich don’t need in order to flourish.45 If any of these three circumstances are in place, it will be the case that there are certain needs which have a higher moral urgency then the desires which could be met by the income and wealth which rich people hold. Let us call the money that rich people hold which exceeds the riches-line their excess money. There are three possible attitudes that rich people can have towards the excess money that they hold, and which limitarianism claims they are not morally entitled to keep. The first possibility is that rich people do not value their excess money: they don’t care about having it, or may even see it as a burden. In those cases, it is a net societal improvement for all parties involved if money is transferred from the rich to those with urgent needs or to policies that address collective action problems. The second possibility is that the rich people value their excess money, and would like to use that money to meet certain desires that fall outside the scope of what society has decided to be the account of ‘riches’. Call these desires luxurious desires. For example, someone may hold the luxurious desire to fly to the moon, or to buy their lover every week another bottle of perfume. Yet since these desires fall outside the scope of a fully flourishing life, they have zero urgency; and given that there are simultaneously urgent needs to be met, a consequentialist moral framework would urge them to be spent on those needs. Note that this argument does not deny the philosophical problems we may have in distinguishing needs from desires; it only has to make the (much weaker) claim that we can distinguish certain urgent needs from certain non-urgent desires, while acknowledging that for many human wants it may be highly contested whether they are needs or non-urgent desires. This argument will not touch the disputed grey area where one person’s needs are another person’s luxury desires, since these desires will all be met in case someone qualifies as rich. We only need to be able to distinguish the undisputed needs from the

45 See UNDP (2011) Human Development Report 2011, New York: Palgrave publishers; J. Broome Climate Matters.

27 luxurious desires, while acknowledging that there is a large area of wants where we are not always sure whether they constitute needs or luxurious desires. The third possibility is that rich people value their excess money not because they want to use it to fulfil luxurious desires, but because they want to use it spend it on commitments: they are the philanthropists who may want to give their money away to the support of politics, sciences, arts, or natural parks, or the fight against tropical diseases, poverty or human rights abuses. These preferences pose a challenge to the limitarian doctrine, since it cannot be said that these commitments have zero urgency and should be given zero weight in a social welfare calculation. As a rough typology, these commitments could be seen as falling in three categories: commitments that aim at improving the conditions that make up the circumstances of limitarianism (e.g. the fight against tropical diseases, poverty or human rights abuses); commitments aim at supporting a public good that fall outside the circumstances of limitarianism (the arts, sciences and national parks); and commitments that are aimed at improving the power of a certain group in society (e.g. financial donations to a political party or to the National Rifle Association). If the rich have commitments that aim at improving the conditions that make up the circumstances of limitarianism, then they are in effect endorsing the values of limitarianism. They may, however, disagree about the question who is the best agent of meeting those urgent needs: they may hold the view that civil society organisations and coalitions are much more effective in meeting those needs compared with attempts by governments to meet those needs. This version of limitarianism should expand G in the definition of a person’s PMR to include gifts that are aiming at meeting those urgent unmet needs. The definition of PMR could also be adapted to include (possibly limited) gifts on commitments aim at supporting a public good that fall outside the circumstances of limitarianism.46 Finally, commitments that are aimed at improving the power of a certain group in society should have zero moral urgency and should be treated akin to luxurious desires.

46 There are complicated arguments to be given whether spending on such public goods should be see akin to a private consumption decision or rather not, and one’s position on this question would lead to different versions of limitarianism. Due to considerations of space I cannot address these issues here.

28 Note that the argument for urgent unmet need does not regards riches as an intrinsically morally bad social state, or rich people as non-virtuous people. Rather, the argument for urgent unmet needs is based on the premise that the moral value of excess income is morally insignificant for the holder of that income, but not for society at large, at least under certain usages. A strength of this consequentialist argument for limitarianism is that it is highly suitable for the non-ideal world in which we do not have information about the origins of people’s excess income and about their initial opportunity sets. More precisely, we do not need or want to know whether someone’s excess income comes from clever innovation in a market where there was a huge demand for this innovative good, or from whitewashed money from semi- criminal activities, or from being part of a cartel of high-level managers who give each other excessive high incomes, or from the accumulated inheritance of four frugal grandparents. If one is having so much money that one has more than is needed for a fully flourishing life, one is having too much, and that money should be redistributed to ameliorate one of the three conditions that make up the circumstances of limitarianism.

8. A moral or a political doctrine? So far the argument has remained silent on the question whether limitarianism is a moral or rather a political doctrine. Yet that choice would make a significant difference. Limitarianism as a moral doctrine entails that we have a moral duty not to be rich. If we are rich, we are violating a moral norm, but there is no coercive power, such as the state, that can force us to comply with the norm. Limitarianism as a political doctrine is much more radical, as it entails that the state should tax away any excess money that people have. Should we defend limitarianism as a moral or as a political doctrine? Since limitarianism is a distributive rule of justice rather than beneficence or personal virtues, there is a prima facie case to be made for understanding limitarianism as a political doctrine. After all, following Rawls justice is generally regarded as the first and most important virtue of society, and if justice entails limitarianism (whatever other distributive rule may additionally apply below the

29 riches-line), then limitarianism should be a political doctrine.47 A moral doctrine wouldn’t suffice, since as a moral norm limitarianism is non-enforceable, and we would not be able to take coercive measures against those not complying with this moral duty. On could object to this argument by appealing to concerns of non- compliance. We have to take into account that citizens will not all have a full developed sense of justice, or will not endorse the view that justice is the first virtue in society, so the objection goes. One could therefore argue that in non- ideal circumstances, limitarianism as a moral doctrine may be the best we can hope for. This is compatible with the view that in ideal theory limitarianism should be a political doctrine, whereby limitarianism as a moral doctrine is a step in the direction of limitarianism as a political doctrine. While that all sounds plausible, it doesn’t seem to be enough reason to give up on limitarianism as a political doctrine: a doctrine is not a law a philosopher-dictator can implement, but rather a view for which the philosopher gives the best arguments she can envisage. From that perspective, limitarianism has to be a political doctrine, and it is up to the citizens (one of which will be the philosopher) to try to convince their fellow citizens that this is a doctrine for which we have good arguments. A second objection to seeing limitarianism as a political rather than a moral doctrine relates to the ultimate concern underlying its justification based on the argument from unmet urgent needs. Given that specific justification, we may ask whether these urgent unmet needs will be better met if limitarianism is a political or a moral doctrine. One shouldn’t simply assume that governments are more effective, or indeed equally effective, in meeting those urgent needs, then nongovernmental actors. This is an empirical question. Yet to the extent that NGO’s, technology developers, organizations and communities are more effective than governments in meeting these urgent needs, we have a reason to modify our limitarian account, rather then to abandon it as a political account. One could develop a limitarian doctrine, whereby the factor G in the definition of the PMR would include monetary gifts to non-governmental agents who are aiming at meeting these urgent needs. If we have reasons to believe that

47 Rawls (1999) Theory of Justice, Revised Edition, Cambridge: The Belknap press of Harvard University Press, p. .

30 nongovernmental agents are more effective to meeting those unmet urgent needs than the governments, then this modified account of limitarianism leaves the rich the choice to contribute to the meeting of the urgent needs through non- governmental agents (via tax-deductable gifts), or rather trough the government (via taxation). Weighing these various arguments, I believe that limitarianism should be defended as a political doctrine. Of course, this doesn’t prevent the simultaneous development of a culture of giving among the very affluent who do not qualify as rich. Here too, the government can take measures to create and strengthen the social norm that accompanies the moral norm embodied in limitarianism, by supporting and publically praising gift-giving of the rich, and by various other mechanism that are a government’s disposal to create and strengthen a social norm.48

9. Two objections against limitarianism As is the case with any of the distributive rules that have been proposed in the literature, various objections could be raised against limitarianism. Given space constraints, I will address the two objections which prima facie seems the most compelling. The first objection, the unequal opportunities objection, holds that limitarianism deprives persons from equal opportunities, and should therefore be rejected. This objection starts from the widely shared normative premise that in a just society everyone should have equal opportunities.49 If a person chooses to forgo leisure in order to work more so that she can meet her luxurious desires for which she needs excess money, then she should have the opportunity to do so. Limitarianism creates inequality of opportunity, and should therefore be rejected. The unequal opportunities objection is correct in the claim that those at the top of society will see their opportunities curtailed. But this is the price we pay for something more important, namely the widening of opportunities for

48 Ch. Bicchieri (2006) The Grammar of Society, Cambridge University Press. 49 Ronald Dworkin (1981), ‘Equality of What? Part 2: Equality of Resources’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 10, pp. 283-245.

31 vulnerable groups, namely all those who will benefit from financial investments in ameliorating any of the three empirical conditions which make up the circumstances of limitarianism. The global poor will benefit from poverty- reducing strategies and see a widening of their opportunities to better lives. The disadvantaged in affluent societies will benefit from disadvantages-reducing policies such as more accessible mental health services, or better special needs education. Those who are living in areas where the harms of global warming will be biggest, such as inhabitants of small islands or the large Delta’s, as well as people living in the future, will see their opportunities to live without the harming effects of global warming increased. I thus reject the unequal opportunities objection on the grounds that in the highly unjust and ecologically fragile world in which we live, limitarianism is curtailing some opportunities for the best-off, in order to increase the opportunities for those who have much more restricted initial opportunities. In ideal theory, the unequal opportunities argument may perhaps have some force; but in the non-ideal circumstances in which we live, limitarianism is moving us closer to a situation of equality of opportunity, rather than moving us away from it. The second objection, the incentive objection, starts by noting that if limitarianism is justified with the argument for unmet urgent needs, then its goal is not to punish the rich since there is no moral badness in being rich in itself. Rather, the goal is to meet the unmet urgent needs that are captured by the three conditions that form the circumstances of limitarianism. Yet if the urgent motivation is these urgent unmet needs, why then not endorse the Rawlsian difference principle in a slightly modified form? After all, if there is a moral duty to give away all excess income, then there is a very strong disincentive to add to the social product after one’s income has reached the riches line. Surely it doesn’t contribute to the meeting of the urgent needs if the rich are facing strong disincentives to earn an income beyond the riches-line? The difference principle would solve this disincentive, since it allows the rich to become richer as long as the poor benefit too. In Rawls’s theory, the difference principle states that in the design of the basic social and economic institutions in society, inequalities in social primary goods are allowed as long as they benefit the worst-off group in

32 society.50 A modified difference principle could be applied not to the design of the basic institutions but to income redistribution, and could replace social primary goods with PMR. Wouldn’t this be a distributive rule that better serves the ultimate justification for advocating limitarianism? This is not the case. Limitarianism is agnostic about the distribution below the riches line such as legitimate inequalities among the non-rich, but is more radical with respect to what distributive justice requires at the top end of the distribution. Under the difference principle, a person could be rich and have a lot of excess money, yet of any additional money he would earn only a small fraction would have to go to the worst-off. The limitarian principle wouldn’t allow this: all surplus money would have to go to unmet needs of the worst-off, the disadvantaged, and addressing the urgent collective action problems. Limitarianism shares with the difference principle a strong redistributive aim, but the two are distinct. Yet perhaps the incentive objection cuts deeper, if it is stated directly without reference to the difference principle. Surely it is the case that limitarianism entails a very strong disincentive for almost-rich people to contribute more to the creation of the social product by working harder, innovating smarter and doing more business? While for economists this objection may be an unquestioned assumption, it need not be so. First, it is an empirical question whether rich people would stop working or innovating if their income reaches the riches line. This assumes that their only motivation for working or innovating is material gain. But that is a contestable empirical assumption, since people may also work hard and harder due to commitments, challenges they have set themselves, for the intrinsic joys, esteem or honour. If any of these other motivations is sufficiently weighty, then the incentive argument collapses. Clearly this is an empirical question. Yet to the extent that the underlying empirical premise is true, it gives us another reason to endorse limitarianism as a moral rather than as a political doctrine. Neither the unequal opportunities objection nor the incentives objection succeed. Yet the more important point is that a stronger focus on the rich in theories of justice and normative political philosophy opens up many new

50 Rawls, Theory of Justice, pp. …

33 avenues for ethical and political argumentation. There may be additional reasons why the distinction between the rich and non-rich should play a much more prominent role in ethical argument and theories of justice in particular. The PMR-account of riches developed in this paper can be used for a wide range of riches-referring claims, and the principle of limitarianism can be combined with additional recipient-oriented principles of justice or with distributive rules about those parts of the distribution below the riches-line. Obviously there can be various other accounts of riches, and various other justifications for limitarianism. I have defended the PMR-account of riches, and have argued for limitarianism as a moral doctrine based on the democratic argument and the argument from urgent unmet needs. However, whether the PMR account is the best account of riches, and whether the argument for unmet urgent needs is the best argument for limitarianism, remains to be seen.

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