- Economic Justice

Catalog description

This course investigates the various normative yardsticks that economists use when assessing public policy and the appropriate role for government in the economy. We will be concerned with questions like: What is economic freedom? Are individual property rights absolute? What are the differences, in terms of questions of justice, among slave labor, wage labor, and the work of an independent or cooperative partner? What is a fair distribution of economic resources? Is economic justice fulfilled by: any distribution of income and wealth produced by market processes; an equal distribution of income and wealth; or a partially adjusted market distribution? The definitions of economic justice and fairness are perhaps the most controversial questions in political economy, and this course is designed for you to gain some insight into the contending perspectives that economists have advocated. We will examine natural rights theories, the contested meaning of equality of opportunity, and the potential trade-off between economic efficiency and the redistribution of income and wealth. We will examine perspectives ranging from libertarian to socialist.