Redistribution

The Concept of Redistribution

In the social sciences, the concept of redistribution refers both to the normative questions about the ideas, values, and criteria of justice that ought to illuminate the pursuit of fairness in a given society (from whom to collect? to give to whom? why?) and to the practical question about the means by which authorities should reallocate resources and valuable goods (the most common mechanisms being tax exemptions, public expenditure, cash transfers, subsidies, and social programs). The comprehensiveness of the term cannot be separated from the meaning of its predecessor, distribution. While distribution is an economic concept that refers to the allocation of resources that occurs in society as a result of the free interaction between private agents (mainly in the market but also by means of philanthropy, community organization, international cooperation, etc.), the term redistribution indicates the intervention of the state, as a public authority, in the sanction of the criteria to redistribute and in the administration of the mechanisms of redistribution. In the narrow usage of their respective disciplines, economists tend to focus on the distribution of monetary income (salaries), while political scientists and sociologies adopt a broader approach, looking at the redistribution of wealth, including not only material assets but also other opportunities in life such as health and education as well as entitlements and rights. [Page 2224]Another conceptual distinction between these two terms is that distribution occurs when there are changes or there is reallocation of resources within the existing rules of the game (e.g., compared with retailers, farmers obtained more income than they did in 2009), whereas redistribution takes place when there are changes in the rules of the game (e.g., Congress passed a law granting tax exemptions to farmers).

Explaining Redistribution

Concerns about establishing norms for the redistribution of valuable goods have accompanied humanity since agriculture replaced nomadic hunting as the principal food source, calling for an unprecedented level of organization of tasks including the division of labor, accumulation of stocks, and redistribution of the benefits. Formulas for fair distribution of goods and concern for the weakest are present in the foundational writings of all religions, placing the judgment of fairness on the will of a divine god and offering detailed instructions to mortals on how to implement that justice. The return to humanism and the emergence of the secular state in the Renaissance period put both the judgment and the responsibility of redistribution in human hands, setting the stage for a debate that would prevail throughout modernity: the discussion between those arguing for active intervention of the state in the redistribution of wealth and those arguing that the state should have a limited role. Philosophers and economists such as Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and Karl Marx led the scholarly debates on distribution and redistribution during the birth of the Western nation-states, which were built on the foundations of the egalitarian beliefs consecrated by the French Revolution of 1789.

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