Primary Goods

Rawls and Primary Goods

Rawls defines primary goods as things that everyone presumably wants, such as rights, liberties, powers, opportunities, income, and wealth. These primary goods are meant to promote well-being. Rawls admits that there are certainly other primary goods (such as health), but they are not at the disposition of society to provide. A theory of distributive justice can only concern itself with that which society can provide.

From this standpoint, Rawls would have us imagine that these primary goods are equally distributed to all in society. Since this egalitarian allocation will not be a stable one, trade-offs will result. Rawls's difference principle is meant to govern such transfers. The difference principle states that social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage and so that they are attached to positions and offices open to all. Thus, with primary goods, all trade-offs that result in inequalities (generally for the sake of economic [Page 1667]efficiency) must be structured so that the least advantaged gain from the action. For example, in a business contemplating executive stock options (which will increase the inequality of wages in the company), there must be a direct tie to how the typical line worker in the company (the least advantaged) will also benefit. It is not enough to say that the incentives will make the executives do a better job for stockholder wealth. (This would be the position of Milton Friedman.) The difference principle would require companies to offer line workers the first share in greater profits, either through salary or through contributions to their retirement plans. This is because the difference principle only allows increases in income to the advantaged group so long as the least advantaged are proportionally rewarded as well. This is because the least advantaged must always share in equal fashion whenever a more advantaged group is given more.

The principle behind economic growth implied by the difference principle is that of chain connection. Under chain connection, helping the least advantaged directly by giving them additional primary goods will give a positive upward stimulus to the economy. By giving goods directly to the least advantaged, they will be helped. Also, since the least advantaged will spend this subsidy, there will be a subsequent positive economic stimulus. This positive economic stimulus will be felt throughout the economy. It can be summed up by the maxim “All rise together with the tide.” Chain connection is the opposite of trickle-down macroeconomics, which asserts that the way to help the least advantaged is to give tax breaks or other incentives to the rich so that they will invest the money in securities, with the result that businesses will have more money to hire more workers (which will include the poor). The poor under the trickledown approach are not the proximate but the remote target in economic stimulus.

...