## 1. Distributive Justice and Redistribution




The concept of distributive justice is sometimes understood as the
moral assessment of distributions, or as the moral assessment of
individual or collective decisions in light of how they affect
distributions. Since the publication of Rawls's "Theory of
Justice", however, discussions of distributive justice have
tended to focus more narrowly on the moral assessment of systems of
social rules in light of how they affect distributions. These
distributions affecting institutions include laws and other social
rules governing what kinds of things can be owned (and by whom), how
they can be acquired, transferred, relinquished, and forfeited, how
markets and the production systems are structured, the manner in which
decisions concerning trade policy and the monetary system are made,
and so on. Because international institutions such as markets in
capital and labor, the structure of property rights, the international
trading regimes (including the World Trade Organization), the
international financial institutions marked by the agreement of
Bretton Woods, and other complex systems of international rules can
also be assessed in terms of their effects on distributions, talk of
'international' or 'global' distributive
justice has more recently become more prominent in political
theory (Beitz 1979, Caney 2005, Hinsch 2001, Miller 2007).




The concept of redistribution has been invoked extensively in
discussions of distributive justice in both the domestic and global
context. Indeed, the differences between popular recent approaches to
distributive justice, such as libertarianism, prioritarianism, and
so-called luck egalitarianism, are sometimes characterized in terms of
their attitudes towards redistribution (Scheffler 2003). Even when
non-philosophers debate the justice of distributions, or of
distribution affecting institutional arrangements, their discussions
often take the form of questioning whether and under what circumstances
the 'redistribution' of wealth is justified. Extreme
poverty in developed and developing countries, for example, has led
many to question whether affluent people or countries can and ought to
'help' or 'aid' the poor by redistributing
resources to them, and whether they can be compelled by law to do so
(for example, through the tax system) (Narveson 2002, 2003).




Given its robust role in discussions of distributive justice, it is
unsurprising that disagreements concerning the permissibility of
redistribution have often been quite heated. Robert Nozick (1974, p
169) for example, has argued that redistribution in the form of
compulsory taxation is "morally on par with forced labor."
And he has famously criticized egalitarian principles of distributive
justice, such as Rawls's difference principle (which categorizes as
unjust any national economic order generating inequalities that are
not to the greatest benefit of the lowest socio-economic position) on
the grounds that they would require extensive redistributive
transfers. In this vein, critics of so-called redistributive policies
often claim that while individuals may have *positive* ethical
duties to aid poor or unwell persons, it is morally impermissible to
compel them to do so through state-administered tax and transfer or
other means, unless universal consent for these policies can be
secured (Narveson 2001, ch. 17). Egalitarians, on the other hand,
have often argued that redistribution through compulsory taxation and
other coercively imposed measures is required to meet basic material
needs or to promote other valuable social goals, and provide a
legitimate, though perhaps not morally costless means of doing so.




This essay aims to clarify and evaluate some of these disagreements
by exploring the many different senses in which the concept of
redistribution has been used. It also indicates some of the confusions
to which equivocation among different senses of this concept has led.
It concludes that the use of the concept of redistribution has tended
to obscure rather than clarify the true nature of substantive
disagreements about distributive justice.




Two kinds of questions concerning redistribution can be
identified:


1. *Meaning/Status*: What does 'redistribution'
mean? Does it have a unified and coherent meaning? What *kind*
of a term is 'redistribution': Is it purely descriptive, so
that we can classify practices as redistributive without evaluating 
them? Or does the correct application of the term, like
democracy, liberty, and perhaps also coercion depend on evaluative
 judgments?[1]
 To what kinds of social practices does redistribution refer, and in
what sense are these practices redistributive? Does the concept of
redistribution provide a helpful framework for understanding and
evaluating institutional arrangements, or does it invite
confusion?
2. *Moral Significance*: Can social practices that are commonly
said to involve redistribution be justified? In what contexts and for
what purposes is it permissible to adopt these practices? Does the fact
that a social practice involves redistribution count for or against it,
or does it lack basic moral significance?




We might begin to address these questions by looking more closely at
the *structure* of the concept of redistribution.




The concept of redistribution can be characterized in terms of four
parameters. (1) The *subjects*, such as individual persons or
rigidly and non-rigidly defined groups whose holdings of goods are
modified through the redistribution; (2) The *baseline*, the
initial distribution of goods to which some other distribution is seen
as a redistributive modification; (3) The *social mechanism*,
such as a change in tax laws, monetary policies, or tort law, that
engenders the redistribution of goods among these subjects; and (4)
the *goods*, such as income and property (or perhaps
opportunities and liberties), that are redistributed through this
mechanism.




In assessing whether and how redistribution has occurred, then, the
following four questions must be answered:


1. Among which (if any) *subjects* did the redistribution take
place?
2. Which (if any) *baseline* can be defined, of which the
present distribution can be seen as a modification?
3. Through which (if any) *social mechanism* was the
redistribution brought about?
4. Which (if any) *goods* have been redistributed?




Redistribution refers to modifications of the holdings of particular
persons, collective agents, or groups (as defined in terms of
non-resource holding characteristics), or changes in holdings by groups
(as defined by resource holdings). Sometimes those from and to whom
resources are redistributed are defined as individuals, other times as
groups to which individuals are rigidly assigned (for example, Whites
and Hispanics), and other times to groups that are defined by their
holdings (for example, the top and bottom quintile). We can identify
patterns in terms of rigidly identifiable persons (John and Sally) or
groups (Whites and Hispanics) or, alternatively,
'anonymously' (for example, as a percentile graph or Lorenz
curve). We can imagine a scenario in which, pursuant to some
institutional reform, the average holdings of the richest quintile and
the poorest quintile shift from <5,3> at time
*t*1 to <6,2> at time *t*2,
while the average holdings of Whites and Hispanics or the actual
holdings of John and Sally remain unchanged. Whether redistribution has
occurred, then, *can only be determined relative to the set of
subjects that is identified*.




Discussions of redistribution are not always very specific about which
kinds of subjects they are concerned with, or about the possible
significance of the fact that policies will be more or less
redistributive depending on how these subjects are defined. Take, for
example, the following claim by Harvard economist Richard
Freeman (1999, p. 12), who claims that a set of policies he proposes
will result in "substantial income redistribution from those who
have gained so much in the past 15 to 20 years...for it results
in improving the living standards of those now at or near the
bottom." The referent of 'those', in both the first
and second clauses, could be understood as picking out groups of
specific individuals (a set of proper names), or group statistical
aggregates (the top or bottom quintile). If the claim refers to groups
of particular individuals, then lack of change in the pattern of
holdings between the top and bottom income quintiles needn't mean that
no redistribution has taken place. If substantial numbers of people
have moved up or down, then redistribution (in this sense) has taken
place. My focus in this entry will be on the issue of the baseline,
since this seems most fundamental.


## 2. The Baseline Distribution




Talk of redistribution implies a baseline, some distribution to which
another distribution can be compared. We can explore this concept by
examining the different baselines that are implicitly or explicitly
adopted when people claim that redistribution has taken place. Once
these baseline distributions are clarified, questions regarding the
meaning and moral significance of redistribution can be more easily
addressed.


### 2.1 Diachronic Redistribution




The baseline distribution can be specified *diachronically*,
in terms of some distribution that held at an earlier time. Economists,
for example, often refer to policies as having redistributive effects
when they engender a different pattern of holdings than obtained
previously. Redistribution of wealth, in this sense, occurs whenever
there is a shift in patterns of holdings over time (among some set of
subjects) in response to some policy or other social mechanism. On this
understanding, we can determine whether redistribution has taken place
by identifying (1) a pattern of holdings at time *t*1
that characterizes the initial distribution; (2) a pattern of holdings
at time *t*2 that characterizes the later
distribution; and (3) some policy or other social mechanism
that, intentionally or not, caused the change in patterns of holdings
between *t*1 and
 *t*2.[2]
 Let us call
redistribution that invokes a diachronically specified baseline
'diachronic redistribution.' Diachronic redistribution can
be brought about through many different means, including the reform of
social institutions (for example, torts, rules governing competition,
trade and tax policy, or the structure of markets in capital and
labor), changes in the prevailing social ethos, or specific market or
other interventions by governments.


#### 2.1.1 Purposive Diachronic Redistribution




Redistribution is often understood more narrowly, referring only to
socially caused changes in patterns of holdings over time that are
implemented (at least in part) for the very reason that they are likely
to bring about these
 changes.[3]
 Let us refer to redistribution in this sense
as 'purposive diachronic redistribution.'




Purposive diachronic redistribution is usually associated with (but
is certainly not limited to) changes in systems of taxation and
property rights. Changes in the structure of markets, the production
system, monetary policy, the allocation of public funds for primary and
secondary education, or the level of the minimum wage have all been
adopted at least partly for the purpose of bringing about changes in
the pattern of holdings. In a recent study, for instance, Alberto
Alesina *et al*. (1999) have argued that Italy's practice of heavily
concentrating public sector jobs in the poorer Southern regions is
'redistributive' in that it is adopted for the purpose of
creating a more egalitarian distribution of economic opportunities
between Northern and Southern Italy. Purposive diachronic
redistribution involves the successful implementation of institutions
and policies whose purpose is to bring about changes in the holdings of
different subjects. On this interpretation, determining whether
redistribution has taken place involves identifying (1) the holdings of
a set of subjects at time *t*1; (2) the holdings of
these subjects after the policy or institutional changes at
*t*2; (3) an agent or set of agents who have enacted
the policy or institutional changes that have engendered changes in
holdings; and (4) the purposes of these agents in bringing these
changes about.




It will not always be easy to identify whether redistribution in
this sense has occurred, since the purposes of those who choose and
implement policies are often opaque, and also because changes in
policies and institutions result from collective decisions involving
many agents with diverse and often conflicting purposes. Former U.S.
President Clinton's 1996 minimum wage legislation, for example, appears
to have marginally increased the holdings of workers at the bottom
quintile of the income distribution. Whether this was an instance of
purposive diachronic redistribution is less clear. It may have been
part of an overall plan to improve the position of the least
advantaged. Or, instead of reflecting a systematic attempt to intervene
on behalf of those at the low end of the labor market, the purpose of
the legislation may have been to appease organized labor and a
generally dissatisfied public. Still other policies may be adopted for
the purpose of bringing about changes in the patterns of holdings, but
fail to do so, either because of internal flaws in the policies
themselves, or because of countervailing pressure from other
factors.


#### 2.1.2 Redistribution as Taking




Sometimes redistribution is taken to refer to a particular social
mechanism for bringing about changes in holdings overtime --
namely, when there has been some prior distribution of resources, and
those particular resources have been 'taken' away from some
of those who initially possessed them and given to others. Let us refer
to this second diachronic understanding as 'redistribution as
taking'. Identifying instances of redistribution as purposive
taking requires specifying (1) a set of holdings of some rigidly
identifiable agents (a, b, c) that obtains at time
*t*1; (2) the set of the holdings of these agents
that obtains after the policy or institutional changes have been
enacted at time *t*2; and (3) the agent(s) that have
'taken' the holdings of some of these agents and
distributed them to other of these agents.




Expropriation is a clear and familiar case of redistribution as
taking. Some local government agency, for example, may expropriate a
condominium from the Jones family without compensation and subsequently
transfer the condominium to the Matua family. In this example, a good
that was initially in the possession of some person or persons is taken
out of their possession by some agent (perhaps by force or with the
threat of force) and given to someone
 else.[4]
 Land reform policies and some forms of taxation also appear to
involve redistribution as taking. It is worth noting, however, that
many purportedly 'redistributive' practices do not involve
taking. Income tax, for instance, which is commonly thought to involve
'redistribution as taking', does not typically confiscate
income that was initially in the possession of the taxpayer, since it
is usually withheld from
 pay.[5]


#### 2.1.3 The Status and Moral Significance of Diachronic Redistribution




What kind of concept is redistribution when used in the senses
defined above? All of these understandings of redistribution are
*purely descriptive*. We needn't evaluate a pattern change, a
purposive pattern change, or a taking to identify them. These
understandings identify distinct but partially overlapping sets of
practices and actions as redistributive. Some policies and
institutional changes, for example, may involve redistribution in all
of these senses. Take, for instance, Taiwan, which, in the course of a
decade, radically reduced levels of income inequality -- thereby
involving a case of diachronic redistribution. Some studies (e.g.,
Kuo *et al*. 1984) suggest that these pattern changes were at
least partly the intent of a package of policies that included
agricultural reform and increased expenditure on health and education
-- thereby exhibiting purposive diachronic redistribution. And
among the most important agricultural reforms were changes in land
distribution -- thereby involving redistribution as taking.




In other cases it may be unclear whether redistribution occurred in
any of these three senses. Take, for example, the question of whether
income redistribution occurred in the United States between 1979 and
1987, accepting as true the findings of a U.S. congressional study
(released in March, 1989) which claimed that the average family
*net* income of the poorest fifth of the American population
declined by over 6 percent from 1979 to 1987, while it rose by over 11
percent for the richest fifth, and that personal income declined by 9.8
percent for the poorest fifth while rising 15.6 percent for the richest
 fifth.[6]
 With respect to income quintiles, it seems very likely that
diachronic income redistribution occurred between 1979 and 1987
-- but only very likely, since it is possible in principle to
deny that the income shifts among quintiles were caused by the
policies adopted by the Reagan Administration or through other social
mechanisms. As noted above, the term 'redistribution' is
usually taken to require some social mechanism that, whether
intentionally or not, causes the shift.




With respect to purposive diachronic redistribution, matters are
still less clear, since in the case at hand it is hard to determine whether or not
officials in the Reagan Administration intended that their policies
should have these effects. And the congressional study provides no
information about whether purposive taking occurred,
since it refers only to income quintiles, which are non-rigidly
defined.




It is hard to see how redistribution in any of the diachronic
senses could have any *basic* moral significance. That is, that
some social reform involves redistribution in this sense would not *as such*
count for or against it. Different institutional arrangements,
policies, conventions, and individual behaviors will tend to produce
different patterns of holdings. Each set of patterns of holdings
engendered by changes in these factors can be viewed as redistributive
relative to others, and whether a policy is redistributive will depend
only on *when* it is adopted and which policies prevailed
beforehand. Surely, some will do better after a policy or institutional
change than they fared before it -- but this is not in itself an
objection to it. Similarly, though we may of course have grounds for
criticizing the particular kinds of patterns that public officials
intend to bring about, or for finding these policies objectionable on
other grounds (for example, if they are intended to discriminate
arbitrarily against minorities or other groups that are socially
disfavored), the mere fact that a policy is adopted for the purpose of
bringing about changes in patterns of holdings does not count for or
against it.




Purposive taking may appear to have basic moral significance, such
that the fact that a policy involves purposive taking always counts
against it. The thought here would be that we tend to develop plans
and projects based on things in our physical possession -- and it
therefore seems wrong to us if these goods are expropriated from us
and given to others. But our assessments of takings seem to depend
wholly on background facts. With respect to the expropriated
condominium discussed above, for example, our assessment of whether or
not the Joneses' rights were violated or infringed, or their interests
unfairly harmed would seem to depend on the answers to three
interconnected questions:


1. Did the Jones family acquire the condominium that the government has
redistributed through legitimate means?
2. If the answer to 1 was 'yes', did the Jones family acquire a
claim to exclusive and enduring use of the condominium?
3. If the answer to 1 or 2 was 'no', was the government
agency that carried out the expropriation exercising right authority in
so
 doing?[7]




We can see the relevance of these considerations by imagining
contexts in which the Jones family has stolen the condominium, or perhaps
signed a time-sharing agreement, which entitle them to exclusive use of
it only for two months of each year. Regardless of their deep
attachment to the condominium, or the unpleasantness of having physical
possessions forcefully expropriated, their interests are not unfairly
harmed since they lack valid moral claims to its exclusive and enduring
use.




This example shows that whether takings are morally problematic
depends not on facts about the initial physical distribution of goods,
but on whether these actions take from or give to people or groups
things that are *rightfully* in their possession. The initial
possession of goods raises questions about subsequent transfers only if
the initial possession is *rightful* rather than merely
physical. Indeed, where possessions have been acquired through unjust
processes, purposive takings may be required to *restore*
rightful possession. Hillel Steiner (1994), for example, has recently
argued that a bloody history of conquest, theft, and unilateral and
disproportionate appropriation of land amounts to the imposition of an
unjust distribution of resources that can be remedied only by taking
and redistributing resources and, where impracticable, by a
'redress fund' that compensates those who are excluded from
the use of natural and other resources.




That purposive takings have no basic moral significance can be shown
in another way. Some taxes are lawfully withheld from pay while others
are lawfully 'taken' after income is in the possession of
the taxpayer. In either case, people have enduring legal entitlements
to their net rather than their gross incomes. Yet it seems that these
contingent facts about different income tax systems could not possibly
make any significant difference to our normative assessment of them.
Whether a tax can be morally justified depends, therefore, not on
whether it involves a redistributive taking, but whether it is
compatible with a plausible account of the processes by which people
can acquire valid moral claims to things. There are, of course, reasons
for considering certain economic systems just, and others unjust, but
the fact that these systems involve redistribution in the
diachronic sense does not in itself seem to be relevant to these
assessments.


### 2.2 Synchronic Comparisons




The baseline distribution can also be specified synchronically, by
comparing the prevailing distribution to a distribution that *would
have held* had different circumstances obtained. Since circumstance
could have differed in many ways, judging whether redistribution in
this sense has occurred will require identifying a more specific
*subjunctive baseline situation* that can serve as the basis for
these assessments.




With respect to the question of whether the redistribution of income
occurred in the U.S. between 1979 and 1987, for example, we might
specify the subjunctive baseline scenario in terms of what income
distribution would have been like (1) had policy changes, such as tax
cuts, reduction of commercial regulations, and increases in military
expenditure not been implemented; (2) had there been no income tax; (3)
had all persons and groups received what they contributed to
production; (4) had all persons received their gross incomes minus what
is required to cover the costs of the public benefits that they have
received and the value that they have extracted from the commons; or
(5) what they would have received had their holdings reflected what
they were entitled to.


#### 2.2.1 Unmoralized Subjunctive Baselines




Let us first examine the subjunctively defined baselines (1)-(3).
Determining whether redistribution occurred relative to each of these
baselines can be extremely difficult in practice, since the
counterfactuals upon which they depend are quite complex. This is not
always adequately recognized. It is sometimes assumed, for example,
that baseline (2) is identical to the pattern of gross (pre-tax)
incomes, so that difference between gross and net income will count as
redistributed income according to it. But this is mistaken. The
presence or absence of income tax will itself substantially influence
many market outcomes, including the availability of economic
opportunities to persons with different sets of skills and personal
characteristics, and the gross incomes that can be earned in different
jobs. Had no income tax been in place, altogether different jobs and
economic opportunities would most likely have existed, and gross
incomes would most likely have been very
 different.[8]
 Indeed, it is extremely hard even to venture a guess at what
distribution of income would have obtained had there been no income
 tax.[9]
 Identifying the set of holdings that would obtain in the subjunctive
baseline scenario invoked by (3) is even more problematic. This is
because there is no obvious way of determining how much some
individual has contributed to production. Even examples that involve
one person producing something from a set of raw materials without the
help of others -- it is not obvious how to separate out how much
of the produced good is due to Crusoe's contribution and how much to
the materials themselves. In cases of interdependent production,
things become even more difficult, since there is usually no
non-arbitrary way of determining the contributions of different
factors of production (for example, labor, capital, raw materials,
so-called public goods, and so on) that jointly lead to total
output. It is sometimes claimed that using a person's marginal product
as a proxy for what they have contributed to production can circumvent
these problems. But this, too, is mistaken. First, in conditions
where there are increasing or decreasing returns to scale, not
everyone will be able to receive what they contribute. Where there
are increasing returns to scale, for example, it will be
*impossible* for people to receive what they contribute at the
margins since the marginal return is greater than the average. Second,
while assessments of the marginal productivity of different inputs can
be useful for deciding how to use additional resources so as to
maximize profit, they do not show how much each resource has produced
as a proportion of the total output.




Putting aside the manifest difficulties involved in characterizing the
pattern of holdings that would obtain in these subjunctive baselines,
would the fact that redistribution has occurred relative to any of
them count for or against them as such? With respect to (1) and (2)
the answer is 'no.' The mere fact that some policy change
leads to a different pattern of holdings than would have obtained had
it not been implemented provides no reason to reject it. Similarly,
that a pattern of holdings differs from the pattern that would have
obtained in the absence of any taxation would not in itself seem to
give us reason to look upon the pattern of holdings that obtain with
the tax positively or negatively. In both of these cases, our
assessment of the policies should be based upon what we take to be
their other morally relevant features, such as whether the changes
they bring about further disadvantage vulnerable groups, lead to
greater suffering, infringe people's justified claims to things,
and so on. (3), on the other hand, may appear to have basic moral
significance. For although few would insist that all should receive
*exactly* what they contributed to production, or that valuable
social goals ought never to be pursued when they require that some
receive more or less than what they contributed, many might feel that
an economic system in which people regularly receive much less than
what they contribute to production would be unjust.




But granting basic moral significance to the set of holdings that
would have obtained had all received what they contributed to
production is less plausible than it may initially
appear.[10]
First, the intuition that people should receive in income something
close to what they contribute to production seems crucially to depend
on the overall background fairness of the social system in which
production takes place. If, for example, a society allowed educational
opportunities for technical training only to members of certain ethnic
groups, or if poorly designed education system puts these
opportunities out of reach for the vast majority of people, then the
fact that those who received such training might then be able to
contribute more to production would not seem to entitle them to
proportionally higher incomes. Second, the contribution of some person
to total output will depend not only on the value of their labor, but
also on the value of the resources that they own. And the claim that
owners of resources should receive the marginal contribution of their
resources to production is especially problematic: The existing
distribution of such resources is tainted by its historical
evolution. And the purported moral right to full control over what one
owns is rather more tenuous than the moral right fully to control
one's natural endowments. As Sen (1982, p. 4) has put it,
"The moral appeal of giving more -- in (P.T.) Bauer's
words -- to 'those who are more productive and contribute
more to output' does not readily translate into giving more to
'those who own more productive resources which contribute more
to output'."


#### 2.2.2 Moralized Subjunctive Baselines




Discussions of redistribution have often focused on the permissibility
of levying taxes. And it may therefore be tempting simply to identify
the baseline with pretax income. Not all taxes, however, are generally
considered redistributive. Indeed, economists and legal theorists have
typically distinguished between *'redistributive'*
and '*benefit'* taxation. Benefit taxes are
typically understood (Biehl 1982, Cappelen 2000) as user charges:
taxes that are paid to cover the costs of the use of public and
private goods, services, and enabling social conditions (for example,
security, the legal system, social cohesion, public health) that are
secured by the government or taxing authority.




These taxes are, in effect, user charges. Redistributive taxation is
also commonly distinguished from Pigouvian (after the economist Arthur
Pigou), or what might most aptly called 'compensation'
taxes, which pay for harms that persons cause to the environment or to
other people through their
 activities.[11]
 Taxes on carbon emissions, maritime dumping, non-renewable resource
extraction, and even currency transactions, have often been
characterized in this way. Let us call this understanding
'redistribution as tax and transfer'.




Determining whether tax-and-transfer has occurred requires
identifying (1) the extent of the benefits enjoyed by different people
within a social system (or the costs that they have imposed on others);
(2) the costs of providing these benefits or averting imposed costs;
and (3) the contribution of each person to the provision of social
benefits and compensation for costs imposed. Redistributive
tax-and-transfer occurs whenever people have paid taxes that are above
and beyond what is required to cover the costs of the public benefits
that they have received and the costs they have imposed on others.




Sometimes the baseline that is invoked in claims that redistributive
policies are undertaken is the set of holdings that would have obtained
*had they received that to which they were entitled*. Redistribution,
then, is understood as the transfer of holdings that infringes property
rights. In this sense, of course, resources could be
*re*distributed from taxpayers to recipients without the
taxpayers ever having these resources in their physical possession at
all. Though people normally get a paycheck for their net income, and
thus never have access to their gross income, they do, according to
some, have a claim to their gross income, and thus the difference
between gross and net income represents the transfer of holdings to
which they were entitled. We can call this interpretation of
redistribution 'rights-infringing transfers'.
Determinations of whether rights infringing transfers have occurred
will clearly depend upon an account of the nature and scope of property
rights. This requires specifying (1) who has the right; (2) what the
right is a right to (the object of the right); and (3) the kinds of
obligations that others have to the right-holder as a result of the
 right.[12]




Would the fact that a practice involves redistribution as tax and
transfer or rights' infringement be of basic moral significance? Most
seem to agree that it would. Indeed, the debate between Nozick and his
egalitarian critics has generally related to whether a policy's being
redistributive in either of these senses provides a *decisive*
moral reason to reject them. Nozick (1974, p.ix) has (along with other
libertarians) claimed that it does, objecting, "The state may
not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some
citizens to aid others." Nozick's egalitarian critics have
insisted that such practices may be a regrettable necessity. Thomas
Scanlon (1981, p. 199), for instance, has argued: "It may be
true, as Nozick claims, that there is a continuum of interferences
extending from taxation to forced labor, each foreclosing a few more
options than the preceding. But the fact that there is such a
continuum is no reason why we must be indifferent between any two
points along it." And Thomas Nagel (1981, p. 201) adds that
"there is a big difference between suddenly expropriating half
of someone's savings and attaching monetary conditions in advance to
activities, expenditures, and earnings -- the usual form of
taxation. The latter is a much less brutal assault upon the
person."




Both sides of this debate err, however, by simply assuming that
welfare and other social programs are redistributive in either of
these senses. It is often claimed, for example, that welfare and other
social programs are clear examples of tax-and-transfer, because such
programs are usually funded by revenues that are raised from those who
will seldom, if ever, make use of them. But this assumes an overly
narrow understanding of how people can benefit from such programs. In
particular, it overlooks the *indirect* benefits that these
programs provide to those who fund them. Programs that provide a
decent social minimum, for example, may protect those who fund them
from higher crime rates, or promote higher growth rates, a better
educated labor force, and other social goods that benefit them in many
ways (Murphy & Nagel 2003, Chapter 4). Suppose, however, that
those who pay taxes that support a social minimum can insulate
themselves from the risks of crime, or are unaffected by the other
social benefits engendered by these programs. Would this show that the
taxes that they pay to support these programs are redistributive?
Perhaps, but it could also be plausibly claimed that insofar as they
do not support such programs, their remaining taxes help to support a
set of institutional arrangements that *harm* those that suffer
from significant deprivations. Take, for example a social system that
features a market economy whose structure tends to produce significant
inequality and poverty. Under this system, many lack -- through
no fault of their own -- access to basic educational
opportunities, health care, and the foodstuffs required for them to
meet their minimal nutritional needs. Some would argue that insofar as
those who are extremely badly-off are not compensated or efforts are
not made to provide them with enhanced opportunities, they are
*harmed* by the social system. Those who support the social
system by paying taxes, complying with its rules, and through other
means are thus harming, rather than merely failing to benefit, less
advantaged participants. Taxes that ensure that persons can meet their
basic human needs may therefore need to be added to the economic
system lest its imposition constitute a harming of the poor (Pogge
2002). This point has been emphasized in the work of political
theorists who have framed demands for distributive justice in terms of
predistribution (Hacker 2011, O'Neill and Williamson 2012,
Thomas 2017). These theorists call for corrective action to offset
what he regards as the cost of policy shifts that have worked to the
benefit of the very wealthy while undermining the position of the
disadvantaged, for instance by reducing their organizing rights. In
this context, tax and transfer could be seen as compensating for
regressive changes in the predistribution of rights which would
otherwise harm disadvantaged people.
 




To take an international example, some have supported James Tobin's (1996) proposal for a tax on
international currency exchanges on the grounds that capital markets
are currently structured in a way that makes significant shocks and
financial crises more frequent and more painful than they need be,
often causing grave and lasting harm to poorer and more vulnerable
economies. A tax on these transactions is not, according to this view,
redistributive, since its purpose is to correct for and minimize harms
that these markets can engender if left unregulated. Along these
lines, a Tobin-inspired proposal is the 'Robin Hood Tax'
on risky financial transactions, which is gaining momentum in the UK
and other countries (see the link to Robin Hood Tax in the Other
Internet Resources section). Similar claims have been made on behalf
of resource extraction, fuel, carbon, and even global income
taxes. 




The policy proposals mentioned above are quite controversial. They
suggest, however, that the very concept of benefit and compensatory
taxation is a rather complex idea, presupposing a baseline against
which specific policies and institutional arrangements can be seen to
benefit or harm persons. Several baselines can be invoked in making
such comparisons, including what people would have had in a
'state of nature,' in a laissez-faire scheme, within an
order in which people's basic needs are met insofar as possible, and so
on. Different baselines will yield different verdicts about these
arrangements. And since none of the baselines is obviously more
'natural' or 'neutral' than others, moral
reasons must be adduced for treating one or another of them as the
appropriate benchmark for assessing the magnitudes of harm and benefit
that a particular institutional order engenders. Whether we judge
institutional arrangements to have harmed or benefited some agent
-- and therefore whether or not the taxes that these and other
agents pay are redistributive -- depends upon our substantive
normative assessments regarding how these arrangements should be
designed.




The social practices that are sometimes *said* to involve
rights infringing transfers include compulsory taxation that is used to
pay for welfare, social programs provided for the poor and unemployed,
and foreign development aid. It is somewhat curious that many critics
of conservative and libertarian positions seem to agree that taxation
involves redistribution through violation (or at least infringement) of
property rights -- while maintaining that this is nevertheless
justified given the importance of other social
 goals.[13]
 Indeed,
defenses of the welfare state have typically represented
taxation for welfare programs as a form of state-administered
infringement of property rights -- or 'enforced
charity'. These judgments depend, however, on highly specific
(and contentious) understandings of economic justice and the processes
that give rise to valid entitlements. They seem to suppose, for
example, that people have valid moral claims to their gross incomes. A
more robust egalitarian critique of these claims would question whether
gross income provides the appropriate benchmark for judging whether
rights-infringing transfers have occurred. U.S. citizens have a right
only to their net incomes, not their gross incomes. They are legally
obligated not to evade payment of income tax. The choice of a tax
scheme does not reflect a commitment to infringing property rights to
serve social goals; indeed, no individual or government agency may
interfere with the (legal) use of net income. Rather, the tax scheme
reflects a commitment to *fixing the content* of the rules that
determine valid property rights in a particular way. That is, the
income tax is part of the process that fixes the initial (normatively
relevant) distribution, to which the right-holder is completely
 entitled.[14]
 The income tax does not represent *re*distribution, since this
takes for granted some different initial distribution of rightful
holdings (and thus a right with a different object: in this case,
gross
 income).[15]
 Indeed, consideration of social goals such as general economic
security, for instance, often figure in the *design* of an
economic system, including its monetary policies and tax rates, but
these same goals seldom figure in justifications of infringements of
rights (for example, the repossession of goods that have come to be
held by legal means *within* that system) (Murphy
& Nagel 2003, Pogge 1989). Once we have fixed the content of our economic
ground rules (according, of course, to some account of justice), they
cannot be viewed as 'redistributive' in the
rights-infringing sense. Rather, they ought to be viewed as governing
how economic benefits and burdens are rightfully distributed in the
first place. This is just a specific instance of the general
distinction, stressed by Rawls (2001), between the use of
forward-looking considerations in justifying a practice (or, in this
case, an institutional design) and using those same considerations to
justify infringement of the rules of an ongoing practice.




The considerations above do not in themselves show, as Liam Murphy and
Thomas Nagel (2003) have argued, that "Taxes do not
take away from taxpayers what is antecedently theirs; pretax income
has no status as a moral baseline for the purpose of evaluating the
justice of the tax system." Indeed, libertarians and others can
still make out their case that rights-infringing redistribution has
occurred by specifying and justifying entitlement producing rules
that, if accepted, *would* grant pretax income significance as
a moral baseline. They may argue, for example, that gross incomes have
moral significance because they show the value of one's contribution
to social cooperation as assessed by others, or because they represent
(at least roughly) differentials in what individuals contribute to
total
 production.[16]




By employing the concept of redistribution, both libertarians and
their egalitarian critics make it appear that laissez-faire
institutions are natural and define the baseline distribution. They
seem therefore to share the conviction that egalitarians seek to
revise these distributions *ex post* through redistributive
transfers. But this presupposes that the libertarians are correct in
their specification of entitlement producing processes that produce
the initial distribution. The fact that particular forms of taxation
are often seen as redistributive in this sense is due to a tacit
presupposition that a very specific kind of free-market scheme should
serves as a morally privileged 
 benchmark.[17]
 Those who find that only a more
egalitarian set of social arrangements is ethically defensible will
(symmetrically) view the distributions that come about pursuant to a
lasses-faire market scheme as involving rights infringing
redistribution. Here again, the debate is better understood as
concerning what the correct predistribution of right ought to be
(O'Neill and Williamson 2012).


## 3. Conclusion




There are, no doubt, reasons for considering certain economic
systems just, and others unjust, but it has turned out to be difficult
to use the concept of redistribution to mark out differences between
them. Redistribution in any of the three diachronic senses, and in
either of the unmoralized synchronic senses appears to lack basic moral
significance. Redistribution as tax and transfer or as rights
infringement may indeed have basic moral significance. The
classification of policies and institutional arrangements as
redistributive in either of these senses, however, has been shown to
depend on our moral assessment of these practices, and cannot thus be
used as a basis for such assessments.




But couching discussions of distributive justice in terms implied by
redistribution smuggles in associations of forceful takings and rights
infringements, which are not obviously appropriate in the context of
evaluating social programs funded through taxation, or to discussions
of reforms of the global economy. Moreover, focusing on the
permissibility of 'helping' and 'aiding' poorer
people through 'redistributive' transfers seems tacitly to
accept the existing distribution of holdings as a morally unproblematic
benchmark. This focus will tend to privilege the status quo, and foster
resistance to more egalitarian social arrangements.